We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rick Janusz. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rick below.

Rick, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

You could say Bumbin Bee was somehow always there, living within a part of each of us. Joey and I (Rick) had both been successful in our professional lives. Joey in staging, events and hospitality, and myself, a 20 year veteran in Creative. Locked down and shut off from pretty much everything and everyone reinforced our commitment to each other and to changing how we wanted to live our life together moving forward.

It was at this time that we had fallen into an opportunity to potentially purchase a retail store that we frequented. It was quaint, the candles smelled amazing, the decor was primitive and was so unique and friendly. We loved the vibe, so we popped up and into that store. We had a successful month there, learned a lot, but the stars didn’t exactly align for us. We enjoyed it and knew we would eventually own our own store- this was just not our time.

We started plotting our future in retail. One of the areas that were particularly interesting was candles. As an experiment, we started with a candle kit and it all took flight from there. We developed our first line of primitive mason jar candles.

Working feverishly on branding, we bounced ideas off each other and landed on Bumblin Bee candles. Nope, not beeswax, soy- that’s the Bumblin part. It turns out, beeswax farming is generally considered unsustainable. Who knew? The beeswax that is sustainable is prohibitively expensive.

After untold amounts of sketches, scribbles and more sketches we sealed the deal on branding. A Bee. Groundbreaking. But the Bee is seldom alone, it sits atop a text lockup that describes the product, whether one we handcrafted, hand-poured or hand picked- just for you. And thus, the journey began.
We armed ourselves with inked stamps with our logo lockups and went to town on the products we brought into the store.

All of our candles and melts got printed branding from our printer while any handcrafted items like wreaths, garlands or shelf sitters got our wood tag with our ONE-OF-A-KIND item lockup stamp. Any items that we did not make got the tag with the HAND PICKED just for you lockup stamp. We still use these today in our brand new store.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We’re 100% all natural soy wax and premium essential and fragrance oils. All of the components for our candles, including the wax, cotton wicks, oils, jars, lids and labels are all American made. Even the packaging is made in America from recycled materials.

All of our candles have been road tested and then tested again to ensure a clean and safe burn for yourself and your loved ones. Our candles are free from harmful toxins and soot.

Can you talk to us about your experience with buying businesses?

We got into the retail industry by pure dumb luck. On April 6th 2022, we finally had our first 24 page, full color catalog in print and we hit the streets with little more than candle samples and nerve. We amazingly entered our first rental agreement with a store, the very first day; Redtail Market in Frankfort, IL. It’s a vendor market where we rented space to hock our wares. To date, we are in 9 stores in 4 states after our first year in business. We just had our 1 year anniversary in October.

As our anniversary was nearing, we again picked back up on the store endeavor. We started looking at rental spaces and found one in the city next to Redtail Market, Tinley Park. Feeling a bit weary of the conversation we headed over to Redtail to talk with the owner and pick her brain. The blood rushed to her face, uncertain of what we were going to hear, she blurts out- I was thinking of retiring.

We couldn’t believe it. We had just participated in their Fall Fest and realized how crazy supportive that community is to small business. We didn’t even need to think about it. We had said yes without even knowing the conditions of the agreement. We knew her to be fair. And, we knew she was ready to retire.

The process went fast, she sold everything, her square register, blink security system, siriusXM, furniture, her bags. Literally. Everything. From start to finish, the process took a little over a month. We started conversations in early September and were given the keys October 3rd and signed the lease October 8th

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

The quality and uniqueness of our handmade products and candles but the most important part of our brand has turned out to be us and the connections we make with people. People love talking to others about the products they’re buying. Whether its a social connection online through follows, comments, likes and interactions or in person, face to face. They love knowing the person who made it and we’ve discovered a lot of people enjoy supporting small businesses. It doesn’t surprise us though because we do too.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.bumblinbee.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bumblin.bee.home/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bumblinbeehome/

Image Credits
These images were all taken by me, Rick Janusz