Gift Focus inc Attire Accessories - Page number 74 - May/June 2021

74 When did you start up and why? Busy Bee Candles really began as a hobby back in 2006/2007. I’m a civil engineer by training and my wife Dee always worked in offices. We both enjoyed crafts in our spare time. I have a keen interest in woodturning and handmade furniture and Dee has a keen equestrian interest that continues today. We began making candles and wax melts to use at home just for fun. It was a completely new craft pastime and we made gift baskets from our candles and melts for family and friends for birthdays and Christmas. They loved the products so much that they asked if they could buy them to keep stocked. That was the start of Busy Bee Candles as a business. What prompted you to launch the business? The business really began to take off after we showed our earliest melts and candles to a few retailers we knew. One was a rather forward thinking café that stocked local goods in Cardiff and the other was a hair salon we knew that also stocked a little bit of giftware. They both placed orders straight away and that encouraged us to look at it more closely. We decided to roll the dice and took on a 2x2m stand at Spring Fair. The smallest broom cupboard stall you can take really and we busily took our goodies up to Birmingham in the family car. It was quite funny to be honest. A minnow amongst giants was how it felt back then. I remember seeing some of the huge corporation stands and thinking “oh my gosh, what have we done.” However, it was pretty successful and despite us having to vacate the stand to let customers see the products, we made some great contacts and learned a lot. From there on, we continued to grow year on year. What challenges have you overcome since the company’s launch? I’d say the biggest challenge is the increased competition in the candle industry. When we started off there were a handful of very large corporation type candle companies, a few mid-sized and a few tiny homegrown affairs like us. Quite rapidly and within a few years, the rise of the homemade wax melt maker had taken off in a big way mostly due to the availability of the raw ingredients and maybe because people could see what we and other small companies were doing. I see it as a positive in some ways as wax melt and candle usage has grown significantly and we’ve grown year on year along with it. Tell us about your product offering. We offer an incredible amount of variety at Busy Bee Candles – over 250 fragrances at the last count and in a huge array of products. Along with traditional wick type candles, we developed and patented Magik Candle, a flame-free scented candle alternative that we see as the future of candles in the home. Safer, easier to use and lasting significantly longer, Magik Candle really is unique. You can even top the fragrance up when its depleted so it’s a rechargeable scented candle – how environmentally friendly is that! We also manufacture a lot of melts in four different lines. From the newest and largest released last year called a Fragrance Bar to what has become an industry standard melt product we trade marked as Magik Beanz. All feature a huge fragrance throw, pure soy wax and the best fragrance oils we can source. We try a lot of other melts but can’t find any better than our own for performance and longevity. So much so that large overseas importing wholesalers now take some of our lines under their own brand names, they are that good. We supply 37 different styles of mosaic glass wax warmers in designs that are unique to Busy Bee Candles. These have proven incredibly popular. I think the quality shines through – excuse the pun. So much so that again, some of the large overseas importing wholesalers have