We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Christopher & Terrance Jackson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Christopher & Terrance below.
Christopher & Terrance, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
How did we come up with this idea? the idea came about one day my brother and i were just having a conversation at work one night on how we could come up with something to bring extra income into our households. in that conversation I brought up masculine candles because I noticed that when my wife buys candles and she buys a masculine candle I go to burn it and she says it’s too masculine to to burn in the whole house so I would have to resolve to burning it either in a bathroom or in my man cave, my brother also noticed that his wife would come home with bags of candles but wouldn’t really have anything masculine in her bag so with this idea in the back of my mind I mentioned it to him and he said it was a great idea we should do masculine candles and soaps. we’re not saying that there’s not masculine candles out there we just feel like there’s not a big enough market for it because when you walk in most departments stores you typically find your usual tropical, sweet, fruit, or dessert smelling candles. so we wanted to create a candle line that was masculine enough for a man but doesn’t make a woman turn their nose up to it. for example we wanted to create a line that similar to when a man puts on his favorite cologne and his wife or girlfriend smells them she makes the comment that I can just sit here and smell you all night so with that in mind we wanted to create masculine candles that a man could burn in his house that would meet both parties in the middle. we do have masculine smelling candles but we also have candles that’s on the sweet, relaxing, and sensual side too, but they all still have a masculine tone to it. after doing research on candle making we got to work and started testing different sense and a few months later DeterMen Candle Co was born.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
“A deterred man is determined” We say a deterred man is determined because you never know what life is going to throw at you whether it be a life changinge situation or something in general In your life, nobody really knows the plan that God has for you, but whatever that determit is you’ll determined to get past it or through it
Hi my name is Terrance Jackson I’m 36 years old married with one child, I’m Christopher Jackson married with three children. to take you back on the journey of our lives my brother and i wanted to work in the medical field my brother Christopher was going to school to be a doctor and I Terrance was going to school to be a nurse. when we graduated high school we got part-time jobs at as shipping company and the company offered great perks and benefits so as we embarked on our journey of going to school we just kept working part time at this company. life throws obstacles at you and sometimes deter you from your plan A so sometimes you have to fall back on plan B, so our plan B ended up becoming our full-time jobs and that lead us to driving 18 wheelers, with our jobs the hours aren’t always the same every week so as we stated before we wanted to figure out something to do that can bring some extra money into our households l. It’s funny how two guys who wanted to work in the medical field ended up not working in the medical field but ended up driving trucks for a company and turned into having a candle business. as we pondered about the ideas of what we wanted to do to bring in extra money. Candle making kinda came out of left field. even when it comes down to it our hobbies there in different interests my brother/ business partner has a love for cars, hunting, and shoes. I have a love for sports, fishing, and cooking. It’s hard to invent new things nowadays but you can take things that’s already been invented or made and make them better so when we were talking about the idea of making candles to bring the extra money into our household the idea of masculine candles came up because again we’re taking something and trying to improve it. We’re trying to bring awareness or alertness to men because we feel there is a lot of men out there who loves candles but when you walk in the stores it’s not readily available to them or even a big market for men or women to walk into stores to buy their significant others, friend, brother, or somebody in their family a nice masculine candle or gift set for birthday, Christmas, or just because. With our candles we hope to create atmosphere where men will be confident or determined to achieve their goal on whatever they’re trying to do whether it be lighting a Pillow Talk candle because you want to have a nice dinner at home with your wife or a conversation with a special someone and you want to set the mood because you’re trying to get to know this person better or you light our Morning Wood candle which has saffron in it which is a aphrodisiac and you use it to set a sensual atmosphere for intimacy in the bedroom and our Drifting candle which has lavender and provides a aromatherapy atmosphere for when you’re sleeping so that you can have a nice relaxing sleep with your significant other or partner in your room. Whichever one you choose to light you make sure that you’re DeteMEN to fulfill your goal when it’s lit.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
The best source for new clients in the past year for us has come by way of word of mouth from my business partner/brother and in addition to attending local vending events and pop-up shops in our tri-county area. We are a fairly new company and this has allowed for us to engage with costumers and potential customers face to face thus creating a more personal and intimate interaction with the new clients/customers. Furthermore this additionally allows for us to receive instant feedback first hand on what clients/customers like or dislike and how we can pivot, adjust, and create to better meet our target market group’s needs and requests for more desirable scent profiles and overall just products in general.
We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.
My partner and I, are very hands on type of people, thus all of Determen Candle’s products are handmade by us. My brother/business partner took the reigns and came up with our first methods of how we produce candles. He started out along with his wife making candles with D.I.Y. candle kits for fun and things progressed from there. Later on when he introduced the idea us starting our own masculine line of candles he honed his skills and methods and shared his tricks and tips on to me. With our new found knowledge and skills we continued to advance our skills by watching other candle makers on you tube and social media networks. In conjunction to learning to make the candles we learned that making candles is not as simple and cut and dry as it looks. One obstacle we had to overcome was with candle wicks. At the start of our endeavors we great experiences with wood wicked but after a short time we ran into issues with the wood wicks and them staying lit throughout the entirety of the candle. The solution which we later came to find out was our source/brand of wood wicks produced an inconsistent product. Continuing on, we also had similar issues with regular cotton wicks and choosing the the appropriate wick size/thickness which works best for our product without causing a tunneling effect on our candles. But, overall we don’t just make a product and sell it to a consumer, we use and test all our products from the candles, wax melts, soaps, scrubs, and beard oils as well. Our family and friends play an intricate part in our research and development of products. Moreover, a lot of products feedback comes from and is strongly influenced by our wives as well.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.determencandlecompany.com
- Instagram: Determencandleco
- Facebook: Determencandleco