Why is the Taylor Swift Candle $50?

Taylor Swift is selling a $50 scented candle as part of The Tortured Poets Department merch line. It’s an 8 ounce soy candle and there’s really nothing special about it. It comes in a basic black glass jar with a silver logo on the front. Using near identical items and ingredients, I could make this candle for less than $5.00 (you can skip to my candle making cost breakdown here).

So why is this candle so expensive?

Why Does the Taylor Swift Candle Cost $50?

The short answer is obvious. It’s a money grab. This candle is not expensive to make. Soy wax is an inexpensive wax option. The jar is very basic. I can get an identical one for less than $2. There is no way to know the quality of the fragrance oil without knowing the supplier, but I can’t imagine that it’s high quality given the jar and wax selections.

I might understand the $50 price tag if she had picked a more luxurious wax or a more ornate candle jar. A higher quality, more expensive wax like a coconut wax blend would make more sense to me. A jar that could be re-purposed as a home decor piece would be more appropriate for this price point.

Also, as many people on social media have already pointed out, there is an IDENTICAL candle on Amazon currently selling for $16: the Urban Ember Amber Wood candle.

So why is the Taylor Swift candle so expensive? Because she can put her name on anything for any price and a lot of fans will buy it. It’s that simple.

How Much Taylor Swift TTPD Candle Would Cost to Make

Here’s how much it would cost me to make this candle:

NOTE: I calculated the cost of making an 8 ounce candle: 7.2 ounces of wax + 0.8 ounces of fragrance oil (which is a 10% fragrance load and is typical for a scented candle). The only difference between the jar used for the Taylor Swift Candle and the one I use in this calculation is the matte black finish. Both can hold an 8 ounce candle. The wick looks like a cotton flat braid wick. Even if they used a different wick type, the prices aren’t so variable that this calculation would be too far off. All materials come from one candle supply company – the Flaming Candle. I used current pricing as of December 5, 2024. If you also like to nerd out on candle making costs, this post I wrote about how much it costs to make your own candles is for you.

I chose high order quantities, but could have picked even higher order quantities to get the cost per unit down further. If I were mass producing candles for Taylor Swift, I would obviously be purchasing a decently large order quantity to accommodate demand so I suspect that the cost per candle is even cheaper than what I’ve calculated above.

The total above does not account for the cost of the silver label nor the box/packaging, but it’s a pretty close approximation of what it would cost to make an identical candle. I think it’s safe to say that even with the label and the packaging, this candle costs somewhere close to $5 to produce and is being sold for $50. That’s a 10X markup which seems pretty egregious to me.

Is the Taylor Swift Candle worth it?

It takes a lot for me to spend $50 on a candle. It either has to be super high quality or come in a really beautiful vessel that I know I’ll be able to re-purpose as home decor. This fits neither of those criteria. Do we think that a $45 profit per candle is necessary for something this basic? That’s up to the fans to decide. Personally, I don’t think so, but I guess that is why Taylor Swift is a billionaire and I’m not. 🤷🏽‍♀️

If you are willing to spend $50 for a candle, get a higher quality one! Here’s what I would buy if I were looking for a good Amber scented candle instead of the Taylor Swift candle. My three recommendations are all $50 or less:

(1) I love the La Jolie Muse candle containers and at $23.40 for 10 oz, you’re getting a much better deal.

(2) The Voluspa Baltic Amber is an all time favorite, is made from coconut wax, has a gorgeous jar, and is still cheaper than the T. Swift candle at $37.

(3) I love re-using the LAFCO hand blown glass jars as makeup brush holders. The LAFCO Amber Black Vanilla candle is $50 and smells amazing.