Ep 027: Scent, Style and Sustainability with Old Flame Candle Co.

Today on The Heart-led Brand Podcast, we’re chatting with Jaclyn King of Old Flame Candle Co!

Old Flame Candle Co. is a sustainable candle company redefining luxury home fragrance. In the crowded candle industry, Old Flame stands out by repurposing unique antique vessels into chic, statement piece candles that bring a touch of history and character to your home. But the best part is that these are candles you don’t have to throw away! Old Flame is working to reduce waste in the candle industry by offering a refill service so you can keep your candle burning as long as you want and swap it out with new fragrances when one runs out.

Episode Highlights:

Jaclyn’s launch story:

“My moment that I really knew it was going to be a business was when I got accepted to the Magnolia Market with Chip and Joanna Gaines. I applied and just thinking, that would be a fun thing to do occasionally to do a show.. You know, but not, it's not gonna be a business.

The market was in March of 2020. Over that period I just went out and pounded the pavement. I reached, I think, 756 vessels or something like that. I got a huge amount of pieces. And boy, I rallied all the troops, I got all my friends together, and we were pouring. They really stepped up and helped me. In fact, four of them came with me to Waco to go work the show. we were expecting 30 ,000 people is what they told us to do. And I remember vividly, one of the girls that works there stood up on a table. She said, you guys did a great job. This looks amazing. Everybody give yourselves a hand. We were all like, yeah, we're ready. And she said, but I'm coming with a very heavy heart to let you know that we need to now take it all down.

We have decided at the last minute to make a game day decision and we can't do the show. So immediately, I thought it was a joke. Admittedly I started crying because I was like, my gosh, I spent a lot of money preparing for this and I got a lot of inventory and I don't have anything to do with it. I don't have a website. I don't have a store. I don't have anything. This was just going to be something I did one and done. So everyone, most of the people there had soft goods. So they were able to kind of throw it back in the tubs and be on their way. Magnolia was really cool. They sent like 12 people over to help us repackage all of these. Getting it there in one piece was one thing. Now we had to take it back in one piece.

So we loaded it all back up. And I was thinking, what am I going to do now? The whole way home. we were, immediately when we got home, we cracked open a bottle of wine and just all pow-wowed in the dining room. I remember just looking around the living room and there were tubs stacked literally almost to the ceiling and all around the living room. I remember getting messages from Joanna Gaines and she was saying, look, I'm gonna e -market y 'all. It wasn't a post, it was stories. I'm gonna call all y 'all out in stories, but before I do that, I'm gonna give you a week to get settled.

And I over a lot of wine, I thought I was talking to my sister in law who was in town from Denver helping me. And she was like, you just need to get a website. You can do it. Go on Shopify, I hear that's easy. And we're just we're doing this. I'm going to stay for a few more days, take off work, and we're gonna make this happen. So I was able to Photoshop all of them and make them look pretty from the lightbox. I just started with the Instagram page and then just started one by one putting them online.

So it started there, but that really solidified it when she did the stories. And honestly, they were just stories for 24 hours. I was surprised we got the traction we did, but it is Joanna Gaines after all. She's got a big following. But that's how it all started and the website was ugly and you made it so beautiful after that. “

Tips for offering product refills:

At the time, I didn't know of any other company doing refills. I think this is the one thing I'm the most proud of – I feel like we were one of the pioneers that introduced sustainability into the candle industry. It's a multi -billion dollar industry, I'm sure they were out there. I just didn't know of when that was kind of in my face, you letting me know that they did refills. I kept going, well, what else can we do besides candles? So it kind of went into sustainable little vintage match holders and then diffusers and a couple of other things. But then refills hit me and I was like, this is a no brainer. We need to do refills. These people are investing in an antique piece that they can use. And I keep talking about how reusable it is as home decor. Let's make it a reusable candle too. The way that I made it, and actually, I would encourage other people to do such a thing because it is quite profitable you're not working with buying the inventory at this point. You're just working on filling the piece again in your actual raw materials. And we have a huge loyal return customer clientele.

So here's how we do it. Because that was the next step. That's a daunting thing, right? Especially when you're talking about antiques going to the post office. No one likes going to the post office. No one. So the way we do it is when someone wants a refill, we just give them a form, which shows exactly what fragrances are the most up -to -date. It's a waiver form too, because we can't assume liability if it's not packed well or anything like that. So we worked a little liability into it. And then it's literally you circle the fragrance, sign the form. We give them a packing instruction sheet – you can never be too careful. They're just treated awfully. So we give extensive packing instructions and they are responsible for packing it and sending it to us. We ask that the customers also clean out the wax. Our wax is so soft. You can literally just take it and like put it on your hand. It's like lotion. It's that soft. So it's not like you're going trying to scrape it off. So most of them do that. Then taking their form, putting it in a box, sending it to us. One and done. They're done, they wash their hands of it, it's all in our hands.

So what we do is when we receive the box, we re -clean them, we refill them in the, in a lot of times a new fragrance, something different for season, seasonal fragrances. I would encourage people to also look into this if you're an entrepreneur, a discounted shipping company. We use one that has been amazing. Shopify also offers really good discounts to their sellers. And so we work with a discount shipping company and we send it back at a very reasonable expense because as you can imagine, it's heavier with wax. And a lot of times we're working with big pieces, some pieces hold a hundred ounces, I mean, they're huge statement candles. So we then send them back to the client and then they're always elated to have their fresh fills and all that. So it's simple, it's circle the scent, sign it, box it up. We have a lot of people take advantage of it and it is a very profitable part of our business.

Working with Wayfarer:

One thing I cannot go without mentioning is your rebrand. When I was looking to refresh the website, your secondary logo you gave me, I use it on everything. Just look at this amazing recycled vessel that Abby created and the website. I encourage anyone to invest in their brand, especially if they have an econ business, because the sales boosted as a result of that. Having a beautiful online presence and image will sell your products. You can only do so much and the product will speak for itself, but I can't tell you how many times if I'm on two websites, both are selling the same shoe – I'll gravitate toward the one with the cuter website. I mean, it's so ridiculous, but it does something. And so I just am so eternally grateful for what you did for us. It took us to the next level.