In the summer of 2016, I was confined to a bed placed in the middle of my dining room of the house I was in the process of losing. I was laid up after my 5th orthopedic surgery within 2 years, I could not work, my world was crumbling and I felt completely lost.
When immobilized you are almost completely helpless and you can only rely on support from the people around you. Luckily for me, I had great people by my side, mainly my mother and soon-to-be husband.
When I look back to the beginning of this candle venture, it all started with me crying to my mother, “I don’t even have enough money to buy a Vanilla Soy candle!” And with an unsympathetic response she replied, “Then why don’t you just make one?” I laughed and said “I don't think I have a creative bone in my body.” Or so I told myself.
Little did I know at the time the impact on my life that statement would have. A few days later, my mom showed up with a candle making kit and I went to work determined to fix my lack of a vanilla soy candle problem. After a few hours, I finally made a vanilla soy candle! And it was a total flop, the candle was not burning correctly and it did not smell right. My first attempt was a miserable failure.
Being restricted to the dining room bed actually worked to my benefit here. I’m a natural problem solver and I got to work figuring out everything I did wrong in the initial process. For the next year, I researched and tested everything I could about candle making until I fixed everything that went wrong in the initial process.
So here we are, a year later and I’ve cracked the code on the candle making process but I was only making candles for myself. My house smelled great which was nice this time around since here I was again laid up in my dining room after my 7th orthopedic surgery.
My hairdresser was kind enough to do a house visit since I was unable to walk. She arrived and immediately asked where I got the candle I was burning. This started a conversation about my candles and she offered to sell some in her salon. I was hesitant at first but figured I’d give it a shot and see how it went. They flew off the shelves!
Now it was time to make a decision with this candle making hobby. I was still in the predicament of potentially losing my house. Sure it was great to have a couple sales coming in from my hairdresser’s salon but it was by no means a functioning business at this point. Around fall, of that year, I took a leap of faith, signed up for some online marketing classes and began mixing different scents together.
After finishing up my classes in the Spring, I made the Facebook and Instagram pages for Kanda Candles. From there, I got to work, I met an amazing community of people through Instagram. I met Toni Marianna Mogensen (@toni_marianna) and was captivated by her skill of sharing beautiful photos. I reached out to her for a possible collaboration of my product and before I knew it i was heading across the country to meet her and her beautiful family. We have been close friends ever since and the rest is history!