Luxury home fragrance The Candle Brand Norfolk

Fragrance can have an impression on our temper and wellbeing. Some scents can make us nostalgic. Some are uplifting. And some are calming.

For Christina Brand name, lights a scented candle in the evening has always been aspect of how she unwinds at the conclude of the working day.

“I have generally cherished candles,” she claims. “My mum often employed to have candles all-around the household and in the evenings we’d light a candle and have supper. It is just normally been part of my wellness program – making you truly feel superior, producing you sense quiet and calm.”  

It was what motivated her to start her own home fragrance enterprise in 2018, building candles at her kitchen area table to promote at craft marketplaces.

Quick ahead to now, and The Candle Brand’s merchandise are multi-award winners, stocked by much more than 250 shops in the United kingdom and beyond – which include at the Sandringham Estate. 

And at the finish of final calendar year it expanded into new premises at Extended Stratton. 

“When I grew to become pregnant with my daughter, I was searching for a little something to get me into the identical kind of wind down manner and I located that there wasn’t a good deal of candles that you could use although currently being expecting,” she claims. 

Christina has constantly been creative, and when she went on maternity leave from work, she determined to do a candle creating workshop with a maker in Suffolk. 

“I definitely fell in like with it,” states Christina, who has daughters Ruby, 4, and Molly, 2.  

“I uncovered it genuinely uncomplicated to choose up and I just absorbed all the data.” 

She commenced carrying out her have exploration into substances and experimenting with producing her individual candles. 

“I grew to become so passionate about candles and fragrance, that I preferred to convert it into a company. I’d generally been really entrepreneurial and I’d normally preferred my own small business that would allow for me to function all over my youngsters.” 

Christina’s investigate led her to pick out coconut and rapeseed wax for the candles instead than paraffin wax.

And she opted to use fragrance oils relatively than vital oils, as some essential oils are not ideal for expecting ladies and little ones.  

She started out out producing her solutions on her kitchen stove in a bain marie, which meant that she could only make 3 or four candles in one go. 

Christina known as her initial range The Typical Assortment – the very first fragrance being Eucalyptus and Lemon – which is however component of the core assortment currently. 

“It’s a actually well-known 1 and I feel it’s often going to be a staple in our assortment,” she suggests. “It’s a really awesome citrussy, refreshing one.” 

To make her candles stand out, Christina chose frosted jars with wooden lids and to use wood, instead than cotton wicks. 

“It was a thing absolutely various to what was on the industry at the time,” she states. 

Christina released her candles at craft fairs in 2018 and on the net in 2019, and went on to incorporate diffusers and wax melts to her vary of household fragrance products. 

The Candle Brand’s fragrance library now includes 15 scents, like refreshing English Pear and Freesia, relaxing Lavender with Clary Sage, uplifting Jasmine and Frankincense, a collaboration with Norfolk Gin and Christina’s personal personal favourite, inspiring Peony and Rose.  

As with her candles, Christina preferred her diffusers to stand out in the now crowded home fragrance marketplace.

So, the reeds are topped with quite flowers to appear like a bouquet, and the bottle the fragrance comes in is shaped like a vase. The labels are impregnated with wild flower seeds, which are ready to plant also. 

“Everything I do, I want to try and do otherwise,” she claims. “So when I was contemplating of reed diffusers, I didn’t want to just have the reeds because they just weren’t various more than enough for me. 

“I investigated the various means in which I could diffuse the products and I discovered these sola wood bouquets. I discovered a factory that would get the job done with me, I attempted and examined loads of various reeds and distinctive sorts of flowers.”  

The diffusers won two categories in in the 2021 Gift of the Year Awards, organised by the Giftware Affiliation – the Property Fragrance and the My Present Of All Time awards. The candles have been also named the winner of the Attractiveness, Tub and Spa category.     

It is between Christina’s proudest achievements – along with the Sandringham Estate approaching her about stocking her products and solutions (“I was just certainly blown away – it was a monumental minute to be stocked there,” she suggests) and relocating to their to start with off-house premises. 

“I moved to the eating room desk, then I took a bed room in the house, then I took two bedrooms in the household, and then my partner supplied me his man cave, so I finished up taking them – and then we began to move again into the residence,” she states.  

“So, in December just long gone we took the device on in Long Stratton.” 

The company is a serious household affair – her mom-in-legislation was first to appear and get the job done for Christina, adopted by her husband’s auntie, her sister-in-law and a good friend.  

“It’s all loved ones and close friends functioning here now,” she says. 

Household fragrance was a person of the marketplaces which professional a growth in the course of the pandemic, and it was undoubtedly true for The Candle Brand name.  

As Christina explains, there were being positives and negatives to their rapid expansion. 

“We had some astounding successes, but we also experienced a ton of stresses alongside it as very well,” says Christina.   

“As soon as the pandemic hit, our enterprise grew to three moments the dimension it was, it boomed overnight. I feel people had been wanting to redirect their shelling out into wellness merchandise, items that were being helping them mainly because they were being all trapped at household, factors that would make them feel better and make their household truly feel more homely.  

“At the exact time, we also had our suppliers and our suppliers that have been struggling. So we were being making an attempt to preserve up with desire, but there was a shortage of wax in the field, a scarcity of fragrance oils and then my glass provider went bust.” 

Hunting to the long term, there are heaps of brilliant concepts in the pipeline, which includes seasonal fragrances – Christina is at present operating on some summery scents. 

Sustainability has often been at the coronary heart of what she does – The Candle Brand has been vegan-welcoming and plastic-free “from working day one” and a ton of the merchandise packaging is biodegradable as very well. Now, having it to the subsequent degree, Christina is producing refill candles. 

“Refills is a different move ahead,” she suggests. “To consider and make candle glass a very little bit more sustainable and give it one more lease of lifetime. It is heading to be a complete new candle thought, and that is heading to be genuinely fascinating.”   

thecandlebrand.co.uk