You may or may not have seen the social media trend going around where people are comparing #HowItStarted with #HowItsGoing - we thought we’d take the opportunity to reflect on our first 2.5 years in business. Here’s our story…
how it started…
Back in January 2018 Oli and I were on the hunt for a new purpose. Oli was temporarily between jobs and we were determined to start our own business - something we could learn ourselves, from home and which wouldn’t cost the earth. We ordered a ‘make your own candle kit’ online and got practicing, and practicing, and (you guessed it!) practicing.
In the early days we had lots of different ideas for the ‘brand’ we were going to create for our candles, but it was during a walk along the canals near our home in Hertfordshire, discussing our childhoods in Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, that we had that lightbulb moment - “our scents should be named after the counties of the UK, and the scents should be truly relevant to each county!”
We got home and got brainstorming! Each of the Home Counties got its own brainstorm - things that reminded us of that county, notable landmarks, popular foods - you name it, we wrote it down!
Then it was time to hone our product - we trialled different scents, different waxes, different wicks, different packaging - every single element was tested and perfected (or what we thought was perfect at the time!).
We’re proud to say that the core elements of our products we got right from the very start - our candles and reed diffusers themselves have changed very little, and we love them. That’s not to say though that there haven’t been some changes…
how it’s going…
The biggest changes to our products themselves have been to the packaging. In 2019 we (finally) moved away from gold leafing each individual label ourselves, and now have our labels professionally printed. We also introduced beautifully designed sleeves for each of our boxes, which we hope you’ll agree really help to bring the stories of each of the counties to life.
The biggest change to our lives as business owners though has been moving into our first workshop, which we did in August 2019. Whilst we wouldn’t change a thing now, making candles over the hob in our tiny kitchen for as long as we did was difficult, as was the obstacle course of boxes you had to tackle to get from one side of the living room to the other! Having physical space has provided us with ‘space to grow’ our business, quite literally, and we love our little workshop so much.
Those who have been with us from the start will have also noticed our ever-growing product range - we’ve gone from ‘just the 11 Home Counties’ back in 2018 to 25 of Britain’s most beautiful places, plus 3 Winter Collection scents! And we won’t be stopping there - we’re always developing new products, and have a new and exciting range of gifting products ready to launch this month, as well as a list of counties as long as our arm for 2021.
Looking back at the last 2.5 years has made us feel so proud of how far we’ve come in that time, but even more excited to see where we can go in the next 2.5 years - watch this space!
In the meantime, check out our #HowItStartedVsHowItsGoing video below for 2.5 years squeezed into just 1 minute…
Thank you for watching!
