Hobby to business, my candle making journey.
Posted by Drew Colden on
My passion for scent started at a very young age while spending a lot of time with my Grandma Bea who had no sense of smell. This unfortunate circumstance for her gave me a much greater appreciation for my own sense of smell far more than any other sense.
Over the years every time I would walk into a store I would go straight to the candle aisle, it never failed, maybe in the back of my mind I was always a little conscience that maybe this smelling won't last forever, I would though, always leave with one or two candles, sometimes more. The candles were always the same old same old though, apple, pumpkin, cinnamon, Christmas tree and never really a "manly" scent or something I wanted to burn all year round. Oh and the black soot from these candles, OMG it seemed like I was painting my living room once a year, yuck!
On a cool fall afternoon in 2009 I found myself once again going from store to store but never really finding that perfect candle. I went home empty handed that afternoon and started to research candle making with the thought of maybe coming up with that perfect clean burning "manly" scented candle I desired. I spent a good part of the next year working on not only scent but the perfect burn and quickly found out that this was a science. During this process I immediately switched to a healthy alternative, soy after finding out that paraffin wax ( you know the nasty stuff the big guys use) is derived from petroleum, back to the drawing board.
What started out as a hobby turned into 1 year than 2, 3 and ended up being 6 years of perfecting the perfect candle, one that would burn soot free, last long, fill a whole house in minutes with scent and most importantly smell amazing. I found myself coming home every night from a stressful job and spending a few hours in the basement kind of as a therapeutic wind down from the day, it didn't take long for me to realize that this hobby was not only a passion but quickly becoming the start of a business.
Over the course of the 6 years our name changed a half dozen times and I came up with hundreds of different names for scents but I always ended up coming back to destinations like cities or states and even streets and landmarks. It finally dawned on me late one night while laying in bed... Wanderlust and right then and there Wanderlust Scents and the Destination Collection were both born. I have a love for traveling and hopefully through my candles I can bring some of these amazing destinations into your home.
Oh and about where this whole journey started, that perfect manly scent, its called Havana, our number 1 seller!