Blog Post #1 : The Introduction

 Sometime during the first few cold nights of winter 2020, everyone locked-in with the news of the pandemic spreading like wildfire, two of us chatted over the phone about how life had been adjusting for us. Marc and I had worked as artists for a while and we were always on the go, so staying in was a new concept for us. We chatted about the things that kept us sane in these months void of sanity, the importance of creating a comfortable and cozy nest when it was all you saw every day, and most importantly our opinions on gay anthropology.                  

We had seen a funny meme about how we have plant-gays and candle-gays and how we both fell into the latter. We also discussed health concerns and how, although we loved our candles, how so many of them gave us headaches when left on too long. We joked about how we could do better. This joke was followed by a long uncomfortable silence, the perfect condition for an idea. Maybe we COULD do better…. No, we SHOULD do better. We were going to create small, clean-burning candles for family and friends, just in time for the holidays. However, we knew we needed a third member, someone who could appreciate the cuter things in life, someone who could bring our ideas together with the skills of design and branding… I knew just the chandler. 

I reached out to Nicole and the three of us just clicked. We were all passionate about candles, passionate about ethical sourcing, cute packaging, and most of all ready to start a small business! There were so many other similarities we shared. We were all, at one point in our lives, flight attendants, we are all left-handed, and we are all fire signs. We were a business trio matched by the Greek gods of wax themselves. 

We wasted no time with Christmas around the corner and we quickly began educating ourselves on all the things that are potentially toxic in a candle. We did extensive reading into different waxes on the market and found our wax, Madame Coconut-Soy. We read into different wicks and found our wooden friend. We thoroughly studied, combined and debated over many many different fragrance oils and settled on our original Essential Collection. We spent the next couple weeks picking how our candle babies would look and let me tell you, there was a lot of trial and error. We were all also learning ecommerce from scratch. Although we continue to learn new things every day, the first few months were like throwing ourselves into the deep end and learning how to swim. Luckily, we all brought floaties. 

This was the moment it all started. This was our origin. The incredible support from friends and family came pouring in and we had a long list of orders coming out of our weird little second-hand label printer that had boxes covering every inch of Nicole’s floor. We were fully in. The rush was incredible. Whether we were sleep-deprived, dancing to Beyonce in Nicole’s basement, or driving through the snowy streets of Toronto playing Santa Claus and dropping off packages to our first customers, we loved what we did. 

The seasonal dust settled and we were left with a big question. What now? Do we keep going with this? The support was amazing and we were just starting to scratch the surface in terms of branding and design. We weren’t done yet. We sat over a well deserved stack of flapjacks  and talked about creating, not a business, but a community. We loved candles but we knew we were onto something bigger. We had been moved by the overwhelming support to create clean and sustainable local products and craft the perfect cozy home we had come to appreciate. We wanted to connect with artists and artisans in our community and move forward with these values at our very core. 

We incorporated our business and the rest was history. This is our origin story. A pandemic project turned into a small business. We recently celebrated three years, moved into a studio, and we now have 13 stores across Ontario that carry our candles! We have some of the best loyal customers in our candle community and the support is incredible. Together we can keep the art in artisan, the local in home-decor and support our community all the while. We look forward to growing more with you and thank you for reading our very first blog post! We will post all sorts in interesting stories, adventures, and some technical information for those looking to shop a bit more consciously. Happy burning!

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Love,

PS & Co. Team 

Written by Alexander