We recently connected with Andersen Gale and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Andersen, thanks for joining us today. One of the toughest parts of scaling a business is maintaining quality as you grow. How have you managed to maintain quality? Any stories or advice?
Quality control has always been high on Sota Scents’ radar, but as we’ve grown, we’ve become hyper aware. Our team does our best to ensure that every candle we put out for sale checks all of our boxes. When Sota Scents first started, we were making roughly 50 candles per week. With that small of an inventory, quality control is quite easy to manage. As we’ve grown to making 10x+ that amount per week, we’ve had to pivot and ensure our candles are meeting standards we’ve set in place.
Every candle goes through the same process. We melt the all-natural soy wax, mix in our Phthalate free scent by hand, pour each and every candle by hand, and then send it through our labeling process. During the labeling process, the worker gets a full view of the candle to make sure it meets our standards. If the candle is good to go, it is then packaged by hand. If the candle does not meet the requirements, it becomes a “test” burn candle. Imperfections may include un-centered wick, too high of a wax pour, too small of a wax pour, or on the slight occasion, a faulty wick.
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?
Sota Scents Candle Co. started as a DIY, money saving project. In my full-time day job, I’m a Customer Business Manager for a very large corporation. I’m surrounded by numbers and budgets all day and that has transitioned into my personal life. I knew we were spending too much money on candles and that’s when we decided to make our own. My roommate at the time, Brandon Carter, and my girlfriend (now wife) Allie decided it would be fun to try to craft our own one Friday night and ever since then, we’ve been hooked.
The initial candles we made turned out terrible. We knew nothing about how to create candles other than what we saw on a random Facebook video. But I stuck with it and people began telling me I should sell these, so that’s exactly what I did! On October 6th, 2018, Sota Scents was born.
When creating the company, we were focused on what’s missing. Minnesotans have a great pride for our state, and we wanted to create a product that would reflect that. The photo on our label is a picture I took while up at our cabin. I woke up one morning and snapped the photo while standing right before our dock and thought it would make a great label for our candles. Not only are our scents geared towards bringing Minnesotans back to their favorite memories through scent, but now our logo embodied Minnesota as well.
As we’ve grown, we’ve been fortunate enough to make some really great connections. WCCO has been a great partner of ours over the years by highlighting impactful sales we’ve had, featuring our products to grow trial, and connecting with us via social media. We did a COVID giveback where we donated 100% of sales to help fund PPE for hospital staff and WCCO featured us a few times that morning, leading us to sell out within hours. This is just one example but we’re very grateful for the connections we’ve made and the people that continually support us.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
When COVID first hit, we were unsure how Sota Scents was going to make it through. At that point, we relied heavily on trade shows and interacting with people face to face. We had a small online presence, but nothing compared to our in-person sales. As a company, we had to pivot to the online world and grow the business that way. It started off slow because who’s going to buy a candle online that they can’t smell first? This was a rather large hurdle, but we were able to overcome it by driving trial. We held many online sales in the beginning of COVID with the goal of getting our candles in customers hands. Once our customers got a chance to develop a few favorites, we saw sales steadily rise and tons of repeat customers. We were also fortunate enough to be featured on WCCO, Twin Cities Live, and the Woodbury Magazine which led to exposure and new customers.
Another thing that we’re passionate about at Sota Scents is giving back to the community. Once, maybe twice a year, we find an organization or specific people that we help out. Over the years, there’s quite a few families that we’ve been fortunate enough to impact.
A few mentions:
The Braithwaite Family
The Hearts4 Henry Organization
Regions Hospital
Fairview Hospital
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
When starting the business, money was tight. I was not where I wanted to be in my career yet and paying an arm and a leg for rent, not to mention student loans. I was able to pool a lump sum of money by saving and reducing my lifestyle to more budget friendly activities. I even went as far as asking for company equipment for Christmas from my family.
The business started small and steadily grew by investing 100% of profits back into the company. Once we were where we needed to be financially, everything fell into place. The business is currently debt free and turning a yearly profit.
Contact Info:
- Website: sotascents.com
- Instagram: @sotascents
- Facebook: Sota Scents
Image Credits
All photos were taken by myself, Andersen Gale