Who are we?
We're a new student candle business looking forward to selling amazing scented candles for all seasons and festive occasions. Not only that, we are a Young Enterprise company aiming to raise money for the environment and grow a bee friendly garden. We are a company that works together in kindness to produce handmade, sustainable products. Our mission is to spread kindness towards ourselves, people around us and the environment. The bee population is declining and we want to help increase it. We aim for our products reflect this passion.
So far, we have been working on our business for two months. For a short space of time, our business has grown rapidly, still with so much room to expand! From the get go, we have displayed great passion for this project. We wanted to do something for the benefit of others, and we found ourselves producing innovate ideas on how we could build a loving community out of our brand.
What was our first idea?
Our favorite initial idea was seashell jewelry in which we would focus on reducing waste on our beaches, considering we are a seaside town who cherishes its beaches. However, we resolved in setting this idea aside as it was a seasonal idea we thought would only have high demand during summer.
When we looked to the world around us, the prominence of the energy crisis was increasing. Therefore, we refined our focus to a product that would aid those with demanding energy bills during the winter. We thought of knitted items such as blankets and beanies. Other ideas consisted of hoodies, and solar powered items e.g. torches. With Christmas approaching we resolved to candles, as they are a great gift, and were something we hoped to produce fairly quickly in time for festive sales. They also fitted in with the energy crisis pitch because they are an alternate light and heat source.
How did we fundraise?
As a start up business, we needed to raise funding to begin production. Our first school bake sale was a great success. We enjoyed brightening peoples days with our delicious cake selection and friendly service. Meanwhile, we collected market research with a general survey we had compiled. Here, we were reminded of our passion for the community and why we were choosing to be so customer focused.
Despite our efforts with fundraising, we discovered candles would be too expensive to produce considering our budget. This was due to our sustainable design including: glass jars, beeswax, wood wicks and recyclable packaging. Therefore, we resolved to producing wax melts as our original product, with hopes to expand our product range to candles and more in the future.
Sweet beeswax melts smell, accompanied with the elegant fragrance of lavender.Our products
As we settled on this idea, we began to expand it. We knew that as a start up business, we needed to differentiate from other candle businesses. With a focus on building a loving community, we adapted a slogan to "be kind" to one another. This originated from our schools ethos which we thought was a perfect starting point for a student run business striving to make a difference. This quickly developed into the slogan "Bee kind" and we began our research into the benefit of bees to the environment. Our candles developed into beeswax candles that burned for longer, were sustainable for our environment, and 100% natural. Our current range consists of products using ethically sourced beeswax. Our first released product is lavender scented wax melts as lavender is a bee-friendly plant due to its attractive purple colour and fragrant smell.
Our wax melts have been a great success so far. Despite challenges we faced with production for our schools craft fair. Being a start up business came with many limitations. With our school being our base of production, we found it hard to find available times we could use the tech rooms to produce our wax melts. Since then, we have expanded and bought multiple wax molds to try to eradicate this problem.
Our first sale
The craft fair was our biggest event so far, where we had the opportunity to promote our brand to our community in person, meet potential customers, gain market research and experience with trading. It was also lots of fun! We worked as a team with members helping out the organizers of the craft fair, others at the stall, attracting customers, convincing people to buy, explaining our mission, promoting our stall to visitors, handing out business cards and so much more.
Conclusion
Since then, we have gained the confidence for great plans to improve. We are currently producing various scents and candles having made a significant profit at the fair. We are finding ways to improve our sustainability such as finding a local beehive and offering customers to return their packaging so we can recycle it. We must give ourselves credit for how far we have come in just 2 months, having reached all our short term goals and proving we can do this!