Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Alejandro Buxton. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Alejandro, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
The idea came from my mom because she started to get headaches from her candles. At first, we didn’t know where the headaches were coming from so she did a bunch of allergy testing and she learned a lot. But she also found out that she was very sensitive to smell. She threw all her candles away and started making her own. At the time, I had 2 businesses: a lawn mowing business and a lemonade stand. I asked her to teach me how to make candles and then I started to research the ingredients. This was right before COVID. When COVID began, I had to shut down my businesses so I started spending a lot of time on the candles. I created a candle for her called Jurassic Orange and she loved it. That’s what gave me the idea to create more scents and start selling them.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I come from a family of entrepreneurs. My grandparents are both entrepreneurs. My grandma has never been an employee and she’s taught me a lot. She taught me how to make lemonade and then I started selling it out of her salon. My grandpa taught me how to pick weeds so I started a lawn care business. My mom was really supportive of me being an entrepreneur and she really helps a lot now with running the behind the scenes of Smell of Love Candles.
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
I had a little bit of money from my first 2 businesses but I asked my mom for $500. She didn’t give it to me right away. She asked me to think through a business plan and I had to present it to her and my grandma. So I pitched them both and I had to answer their questions before they gave me $500 to buy supplies for testing and I had $120 from my previous businesses that I also used to start my candle business.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
I post a lot of content. I try to record everything that we do with my family. It also helps that we don’t sell anything that we don’t use in our household because we are really allergic. I have asthma, my little sister is vegan because of her allergies and my mom has a lot of allergies. So we have to be careful in the ingredients that we use because if we react, we don’t put that product for sale at all.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.smelloflovecandles.com
- Instagram: @SmellofLoveCandles
- Facebook: @SmellofLoveCandles
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/smell-of-love-candles-llc
- Twitter: @MomandSon
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqo4RCjAPwC_9O4vWOcLe8A
Image Credits
We own the photos.