Written By Cari Pierce
Emily Condon, a full-time teacher who lives in Manchester, sells PartyLite candles out of her home part-time. She started with the company in February 2006. She was drawn to the business, not just for the extra money, which she and her husband call “candle cash,” but because she loves the product.
“One of the top three things that women love to have in their homes is home fragrance and decoration, and because [candles] are a consumable product, it was a really easy business to get started in,” she said.
It is a testament to Carroll Countians’ interest in candles, not to mention the convenience of buying them from home, that in just two years Condon’s business has grown significantly. She was promoted within the company to a unit leader, now helping a minimum of 10 part-time salespeople that PartyLite calls “consultants,” who she brought into the business, grow their own sales and customer base.
Beyond Carroll County, Condon’s senior regional vice president at PartyLite, Alissa Carpenter (who lives in Monrovia, Maryland) reports that her entire team of some 200 regional consultants grossed around $2.3 million in 2007. Carpenter started with PartyLite in 1998. She and her team sold only $50,000 that year. The trend seems obvious.
In fact, candles are everywhere. There is probably one within view of where you are sitting right now. Rightfully so, since U.S. consumers spend approximately $2 billion annually on candles, according to Barbara Miller, spokesperson for the National Candle Association (NCA).
That amounts to about $7 per year for every man, woman and child in the United States. Apparently all it takes is a little wax around a sturdy wick with a bit of colorant, perhaps a few drops of fragrance, and we’re sold. Talk about money to burn.
The candle industry caught fire in the 1990s, sparking what can only be called the candle culture. The thin, delicate white tapers on grandma’s dining table gave way to a universe of candles: all shapes and sizes in various jars and vessels with tempting and exotic scents from Yankee Candle’s Cherry Lemonade to Colonial Candle’s Moroccan Spiceª.
A study by Colonial Candle claims that 77 per cent of adults buy candles and are buying them more frequently. Apparently, the country has gone crazy for candles. Why?
“We’ve all become nesters in the sense that our home is our kingdom,” said Beth Lorentz, Vice President of Marketing for Midwest, which sells the nearly 100 year-old Colonial Candle brand. “We spend a lot of time, emotional energy and disposable income [on] decorating our homes.”
Candle manufacturers and retailers are responding to the growing consumer demand, from people who use candles not only to decorate their homes, but to set emotional moods. They are doing it with fragrance, backed by the science of scent.
“In the early 1990s, the ratio of scented to unscented candles was approximately 20 per cent scented to 80 per cent unscented,” said the NCA’s Miller. “Now, it’s almost the opposite.”
Smell is one of our most sensitive and powerful senses. In a research study sponsored by the Sense of Smell Institute, the research and education division of The Fragrance Foundation, Dr. Howard Ehrlichman, Ph.D., of the Graduate and University Center of the City University of New York concluded, “odor influences subjects’ memories, outlook on their environment and level of creativity.”
Advertising and public relations have played a big role in the candle craze. The Madison Avenue image of a woman relaxing in her spacious bath of bubbles, candles flickering around the tub’s edge, has created a lasting impression on candle consumers. We want our candles to calm us, to transport us, to refresh our minds, to make our homes more inviting.
“We talk about using candles to create the moment… for romanceÉ to convey a night to remember or to create an enchanted garden within our homes or [recreate] the romance of a romantic walk by the sea,” said Lorentz. That is using the timeless, proven pairing of candles and romance to set the mood. Beyond that, consumers expect the candles they buy to set any mood they can think of. Again, the candle manufacturers are responding.
Want to steal away to the Far East between cooking dinner and checking the kids’ homework? Colonial Candle offers a new Thai Silkª candle, fragranced as “a sophisticated and exotic combination of fruits and florals on top of rich woods and ambers,” according to the company’s current catalog.
If you don’t want to spend hours in beach traffic – or because it’s just not a beach – going time of year-you can evoke the smells of the beach, minus the need for sunscreen, with a Cottage Breeze¨ candle, described on Yankee Candle’s website as being “like a day by the shore with the refreshing scent of cool salt air blowing across the dunes.”
Missing the warmth and refuge of grandma’s kitchen on a late winter’s afternoon? Taneytown-based candle artisan Barbara Leyhe makes and sells candles through her online business, The Cottage Rose. Her Apple Cinnamon, Apple Cinnamon Strudel, Nutty Carmel Apple and Apple Walnut candle scents all conjure up the coziness of simpler times gone by.
Price and accessibility have played a big role in creating the candle craze. We might not have the time or money to book a trip to Brunei or Thailand but we can spend less than $10 for a candle and escape to there whenever we want.
“Candles are considered an affordable luxury item,” says Miller. “No one anymore needs a candle to provide light. [A candle] is not a necessity to live.”
Not a necessity, true, but do not tell that to the women (and men, too) who leave kids, work and home behind to head, with anticipation and near-urgency, to a candle home show. That’s right. Now, not only can we buy candles at gas stations, grocery stores, drug stores, clothing stores and online, as well as at department, specialty and house wares stores, we can also buy them in the comfort of our own homes (or someone else’s).
In 1973, according to the company’s web site, PartyLite was established to sell excess inventory of the Colonial Candle product line. Slowly, the business grew. In 1990, just on the cusp of the candle industry’s boom, PartyLite’s home office employed about 40 people. By 2003, the company employed more than 500 people. Today, the company sells its candles and home fragrances direct to customers within a relaxed, home-party environment and boasts more than 100 U.S. regional vice presidents and more than 37,000 independent sales consultants, some earning six-figure annual incomes from their sales.
Who buys these consumable must-haves of wax and wick?
PartyLite’s Alissa Carpenter says her customer base of men buying candles for their own homes has been growing. “I [had] men buying them for their wives, but now I’m seeing men, especially single men, getting into buying them for themselves,” she says. In addition, Carpenter mentions that men are also joining the ranks of PartyLite’s sales force.
Barbara Leyhe can’t describe a typical candle buyer because there is not one, she says. The local chandler tries to offer something for everyone – different buyers, different waxes, different candle types.
“There are so many people who like so many different scents, and they like different styles,” said Leyhe. “If you’re more traditional, you like pillar candles. If you’re into country, you like the cake candles.” (Cake candles are described within the industry as being rather rustic, cake-shaped candles that are highly scented and often have a frosting-like texture on their exteriors.)
Leyhe offers them all. Through her online store, her selling booth within Cape Cod Crafters at the Gettysburg Village outlets and her regular appearances at craft shows, including the springtime Mayberry Mills Arts, Crafts and Gifts Show in Westminster, she has what local candle lovers want.
She makes tea lights, votives, tapers, pillars, container candles, cake candles, wax tarts and more. Leyhe uses different waxes: palm, soy and paraffin, depending on the type of candle she’s creating. And she offers hundreds of different candle fragrances from Citrus Punch to Day at the Spa to Eucalyptus Spearmint, including several original fragrance creations like Cinnamon Bread Pudding, which combines three different scents. “That came out pretty nice,” said Leyhe, “so I’ll lay claim to that one.”
Colonial Candle’s Lorentz said that nationally “a [candle] fragrance that has been a best seller for many, many years is our Simply Vanilla fragrance.” Leyhe points out that her Carroll-reaching-into-Pennsylvania customers love a simple mason jar candle or rustic cake candle in spicy, bakery-type scents. More centrally located Carroll County and Westminster customers appreciate her clean, aromatherapy scents and candles in apothecary-like jars and crocks.
Whether you are parting with a few cents for an inexpensive votive at your local discount store, making a serious purchase of a designer luxury light, like an $180 candle by Santuario di Bellezza or a $345 candle by Jo Malone, or spending more frugally for quality products from Yankee Candle, Colonial Candle and local candle artisans, all you have to ask yourself is: Where do I want to go or how do I want to feel today? A candle can take you there.
