We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Amy & Ashley Shepherd & Nichols. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Amy & Ashley below.

Alright, Amy & Ashley thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear how you think where to draw the line in terms of asking friends and family to support your business – what’s okay and what’s over the line?

We have actually relied on friends and family a lot during the beginning of our business. We started the business in my (Amy’s) spare bedroom so my husband was very understanding of that and even started helping us do deliveries and supply pick ups since both Ashley and I work full time jobs as well. We also have a couple of friends who would hang out with us on “candle nights” and help us with busy work like wicking jars and labeling. We are so appreciative of that help because we’re only two people and sometimes we get overwhelmed. Now that we’re on our 6th year of business, though, we have learned only rely on ourselves fully because of the saying “no one cares more about your business than you”. We’ve realized that we can’t expect other people to help us do markets or whatever it may be because it’s our business and they are simply just helping out of the kindness of their heart. We are so thankful that we had so much support in the beginning of Candleleaf or we probably wouldn’t be where we are today!

Amy & Ashley, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

We pride ourselves on having a natural product for our customers! Basically, we were sitting at dinner one night for Amy’s birthday and we came up with the idea to start Candleleaf. We felt defeated just doing the same clock in clock out routine everyday at our corporate jobs. So we were like bam boom let’s start a candle business! We both love candles and we’re a little weirded out by the store bought ones from bigger box stores. Who knows what they put in those things! Tons of chemicals and things you should not be bringing into our homes. You can buy our products knowing we use simple ingredients that are all natural! We love doing new stuff all the time too. We seriously get so excited to release a new lines of candles or a new product. We just always have new ideas! Candleleaf has definitely been an our creative outlet and we couldn’t be more proud of it.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

So there were already some pretty established candle companies in the local Jax market when we got started in 2019. We signed up for markets and realized that there were always other candle companies there. We loved meeting them and trading product with them because we didn’t want to look at them as competition, but part of a candle making community. However, we wanted our candles to be unique so that there would be a reason to buy our product specifically. We started using crystals and botanicals to decorate the tops of the candles and we are always releasing new scents for the seasons and holidays. Part of the fun of this business, to us, is constantly thinking of new ideas that customers will love. We’ve done mini candles, mystery bags, sample sales, cauldron candles, etc. We love doing small collections so that there’s a lot of variety to choose from. We even started doing candle classes. Our favorite was when we thrifted teacups and everyone at the class got to pick 2 teacups and turn them into candles. We have a lot of customers come up to us and say that we are their favorite candles or the only candles they buy and it makes us so happy. There is nothing better than people buying and enjoying a product that we worked so hard on.

How’d you meet your business partner?

lol this is a funny-ish story! I (Ashley) started working at Cruisers Grill where Amy was already working. I got the job because my really good friend was working there. At first, Amy didn’t know what to think of me. We had different interests and basically we were just co-workers that occasionally spoke to each other about side work at the end of a shift. Then, we started getting scheduled on the opening shifts together and basically we realized we were a lot alike! We both share the love of being outdoors and pop punk music lol working in a restaurant everyday is hard work. We both soon realized that we loved working with each other because we knew we could rely on the other one to always be there. It was nice we had that time together because going into a business we didn’t have any doubts about each other.

Contact Info:

• Website: shopcandleleaf.com
• Instagram: @candleleaf