Gift Focus - Mar/Apr 2019 (Issue 112)

Describe your product offering. We offer the full range of classic home fragrance as well as a couple of totally new products. Scented candles, wax melts, gift sets and seasonal products are always available. Our Magik Beanz® Wax Melt range continues to be very popular, and we attribute that to the strength of throw from these amazing little melts. Our range of Electric Wax Warmers is also incredibly popular, particularly as they feature variable brightness and temperature switches. The star in our range, however, is the Magik Candle® – scented candle without a flame and with a fragrance you can dial in! It really doesn’t get any better in terms of a scented candle. Plus, we’ve patented it. What’s your favourite scent? I love the masculine scents like Secret Agent, Antique Sandalwood, Happy Hippy and Cognac & Cubans. Denise loves all the florals, like the new Evening Encounter, Paris In Bloom and Spring Day. With more than 250 scents, it’s not easy to pick just one! Which trade shows do you visit? Do you have a favourite? Spring Fair is our main trade show. We sometimes exhibit at Autumn Fair too. Spring is our favourite. It’s huge! What are your current bestsellers? Magik Candle®, our range of Electric Wax Warmers and Magik Beanz® Wax Melts. All highly recommended and make for great displays, with some lovely point of sale coming very soon. What’s been your proudest achievement so far? Being granted a patent for Magik Candle®. It took a lot of hard work to develop, and it’s such a great product. Not many products are awarded a patent, and it’s exceptionally rare in the home fragrance world. What’s been your biggest challenge? Our biggest challenge was and still is breaking into larger retailers. It’s just not easy (for us in any case). What values have remained important to Busy Bee Candles? The quality of our finished product and how we make it. We could have switched to cheaper waxes, etc., but it’s just not us. We also try to be as green as we can. Our workshops are heated by biomass, and we use as little plastic as we can. Are you active on social media? Where does most of your marketing energy go? Yes! We post every week day on our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram channels, as well as replying to customer messages. With more than 70,000 combined followers, it’s a huge part of our business. Besides the fabulous Gift Focus, the remainder of our marketing is online. For 2019, we are trying a few new avenues. How do you stand out from the crowd? We really stand out in terms of the variety and the strength of our fragrances. With more than 250 scents and some very strong formulations, we’ve become well known for the strength of our wax melts in particular. Do you have any tips for new traders? Don’t underestimate how much work is involved in launching new brands! What’s next for Busy Bee Candles? We have contracted patent fever. We’ve come up with something else totally new, and once our patent is applied for, we’ll tell Gift Focus all about it. It’s totally fabulous and another first. Buzzing along For more information visit busybeecandles.co.uk or contact Haitham at info@busybeecandles.co.uk 24 giftfocus