I remember meeting you in Papillion at the Farmers market on Wednesdays and then I know that you went to another place. Love to hear a little bit about the journey…
So, did you know us when we were in the blue building?
I knew you before the blue building.
So, we were originally in the basement, then we went to a garage because that is when we were still doing markets and everything but then we tried to change the structure of the business and do more of an aggressive plan and actually go after retail stores and corporate gifting, custom stuff so we obviously needed to grow a little bit and so we went into the blue building that’s in Papio right next to Genes Auto right by the market and we were in there for about fifteen months until we went into the warehouse that we are now off 84th and L.
So we have kind of expanded from four different places across the years.
That’s wonderful.
Yeah, it is pretty good.
How did you get into candles and how did this all evolve and..
So, for my twelfth birthday um I got a candle making kit.
Just kinda of fell in love with how the math and science of candle making works from how the wick goes all the way out to the edge to how much fragrance you can put in it in there even how to create the best candle out there and be the most efficient candle.
Just kind of fell in love with all of that and so that nurtured the first parts of the journey from going to shows and selling it to class room parents, my teachers and all that kind of stuff but then I started to see the actual business side of things and that is where I think my dream now lies because the business aspect is working with people, meeting new people, seeing other people journeys and being able to kind of do that with them to me that is a lot more inspirational and keeps me going every single day.
That’s really cool. There is such a learning difference between doing something you love and making it a business. So what would be your big takeaways for somebody starting their own business? Places to learn, or things to learn… without giving away any candle secrets.
A lot of it is keeping an open mind and understanding that you will fail.
That is part of the business experience.
It’s not necessarily, “Oh I might fail”. It’s a, “You will” and “Just when it is going to happen?”
I bet we failed about 7 times before we had the candles that we have today.
But people just don’t see that. That’s just something that is just never public.
So, that’s definitely keep an open mind and use those failures as a journey and learning opportunity to make yourself better instead of letting it get you down.
Another thing is definitely be pumped to meet all these new people. To me this is one of the biggest things of business is all of the other business people.
It’s closer having your own family because those are a lot of people who will help you personally as a business and as friends and those are something that a lot of people should look forward to.
What are your plans right now for further expansion or development?
Keeping the business going obviously. Every single week every month we are trying to make our candles better because we know we can always make them better. So we are expanding on different types of the business where we bring on different products and developing different type of product that may not have even been a thing in the industry.
Obviously updating our existing products and growing our sales avenues and growing our strategy behind sales to get more stores get in front of more clients and more people and now we are even doing a massive overhaul of our website to create the best functioning website because that is a big aspect of business and we are really tightening down on that too.
Websites are always ever evolving, an evolution, because they have to match what you are doing and be leaning forward on where you are going.
We are trying our hardest to sit back not necessarily be engulfed in our own business, have an outsiders opinion and an outsider’s point of view to sit there and try and think as far outside the box because there is something to be said about having a candle company.. It’s a candle.. you want to try and be as creative and innovate as you can so you are not like every other candle company in the world.
What differentiates you from other companies?
The performance of the candle, the amount of scent throw, the safety that we can bring with the candle as opposed to just throwing a wick in jar and putting too much fragrance in there because they can explode so you want to have actual safety involved with having a live flame in your home.
So, we make sure we have lots of safety testing and make sure we have very high quality control so there are no imperfections in the jars and no imperfections in any of the products that we use and if there is we make sure that those don’t go into our products.
I believe you were doing soy based candles before. Are you still doing that?
Yes, we still use an all-natural soy wax in the Bianchi candle and we always want to keep the packing fresh and new. So I know with our Bianchi as well beaus it is a bigger candle one of our biggest hiccups was how do you keep the strength and integrity of that packaging without giving away any luxury.
Very cool. You said there was a lot of science involved
There is. There is.
I love science so …
Anything from there is like there are candles out there from anything like there are candles out there that you light it up and the wick never burns all the way to the outside. Well, why is that? It’s like what’s the whole thing?
So, like you need to make sure that it is not too big because it will soot too much or it could produce bad carcinogens that can go into the air. If it also too big it could throw off too much scent.
Without the wick there is not so much scent thrown. If you notice the wax burners they don’t necessary last as long even though there is still wax in there. The wax can still be full but you are out of scent. It’s because it needs to have its heat source at the most efficient. So if you make the wick to big it burns out your scent too fast and then you won’t have that longevity so when your candle gets all the way down it’s like out of smell.
Well, you don’t want that but you also can’t just add a lot more scent in there because the scent essential oils and fragrance no matter what you use has a certain flash point for what its flammability is and wicks get very hot so you will see sometimes certain candle companies will have those candles just light on fire and blow up the glass jar.
You don’t want that. It’s not safe for anyone’s home outside or inside.
I’ve had that happen. I’ve had a candle explode and the fire was going up the wall.
That’s something we try and avoid because some companies will put a lot of scent t in that’s a flammable liquid, that’s just adding gas to the fire but they also have a massive wick and that makes it hotter.
Some clients have asked, “We want more of this and more of this”. But well there is a safety aspect so that so we are not going to make one person happy we are not going to potential hurt all these other people and take their homes away.
This is a thing that is really hard when you are developing a business and a product line is you may even get what sounds like really good advice that is not good advice but they don’t really y know it but that can make you shift too much and you may find out it is only that one customer and all that time you spent could have gone somewhere. it is hard to do that those things. It is very wise that you have a nahdle4 that. Hey we have a new idea and we going to vet it properly and decide what to do.
We are doing some testing on our own and we were developing product where we would put in tons of scent, normal in this and none in this and let’s see what happens.
Yeah, ultimately every single time, that one would exploded.
It’s like we are inside of a very safe environment at the warehouse it’s all concrete and stainless tables it’s like nothing is going to catch but at the same time if that was in someone’s home or next to a child, it’s like you can’t have that.
So, that is why we do make sure that safety is one of our number one priorities, especially when it comes all the way down to client because they may not cut their wick all the way, they might not do some to the things they should do to be burning a candle properly but that’s not on them so we want to make sure that it’s the safest in any situation possible.
Sometimes you have to protect your clients from themselves.
It’s like no one’s fault at that point but if you can make it not happen at all let’ do that.
What different kinds of lines and the things do you have going on now?
So, we have our original candle line that one of our most popular lines right now.
Our mainstream Bianchi line which we used to have inside of a white box now that
had like a bridge on it and gondola from Italy and a really cool story behind it.
We completely redesigned that so that one actually has diffuser and candles now.
We have a votive and a 20 ounce flagship candle and those have a luxurious velvet touch box with that inside that kind of helps with the structure so you don’t have to worry about breaking that every two seconds and then we have also with those it’s an essential based fragrance.
So, you get the freshness of the essential oils but the longevity of having the fragrance. So we have found a very nice balance between the two so it doesn’t give people headaches but at the same time essential oils will burn out too fast so let’s keep the happy medium of the two.
That was a lot of fun. We were able to create that and actually launch that in the middle of COVID. We have had great response from it and just recently got that into a bunch of Omaha local retailers and we are also in Von Maurs.
I’ve seen your project here and there. It’s really exciting to think I met you at the farmers market. It’s just really cool to watch the story grow.
You knew it from the start.
Yes. I did.
