We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Candice Goodman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Candice below.
Hi Candice, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?
I am going in to my fifth year of business. For many years I shared my luxury soy candles and melts at craft fairs and flea markets. Last year I began to take on wholesale and consignment spots around Oregon and California. This year I took the biggest leap yet when I acquired a space to offer my customers and wholesalers a place to shop in our very first storefront. After we finish getting our shelves stocked up we are doing a Grand Opening with a ribbon cutting. It’s all becoming official and I am so excited to see where this year takes us!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Agate Edge began on a counter in my home. Our family had decided to do a DIY Christmas just before everything went into mandatory shut downs and my offering was candles. After Christmas I received a ton of positive feedback and decided to make some more candles, but with blends I found appealing for my own home. Palo santo, nag champa, citrus, herbal blends, and several other scent combinations that you don’t normally find on the shelves of the big box stores. I formulated my products to be unique and as clean as possible to accommodate my life, full of children and pets. I sent candles to several friends all around the country for testing and waited impatiently to hear whether any of them liked what I had produced. The response was better than I had hoped for and my candle company began to take shape!
Something my customers often compliment are the unique toppings for each scent. This was inspired by my daughter who was always close behind smelling and rearranging my candle jars as they cured. Her sweet attempt at product quality control left me wondering which scent she had pulled from which counter. My toppings were created as a way for me to keep track of my products at a glance and it still streamlines a lot of what happens in my shop today.
With ingredients that boast cleanliness and surpass scent throw from their competition, I am confident I can impress avid candle enthusiasts with just one candle. I use 100% soy wax, body-safe fragrance oils, sea salt and mica powders. Occasionally there are botanicals included on the toppers depending on the scent. Agate Edge also offers a one dollar credit for every vessel returned to us, so we can help reduce our carbon footprint by recycling our own glass.
I look forward to using our growth this year to help form programs for outreach to teenagers aging out of foster care and women recovering from domestic violence situations in the Southern Oregon area. As a company with an empoyee count of 1, I will be looking to expand by hiring people from these programs to help teach a trade and self sufficiency practices that can provide financial stability and personal development with the help of other participating businesses.
Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?
My business was hard won. I did not start with any help from family or grant money. I grew very slowly and used product income to grow organically. My first purchase was glass from the dollar tree and wax from a bulk lot on amazon. As I sold candles I would set aside the money for more supplies to make the next set. I began in 2020 with three scents and i’m going into 2025 with fifty-two scents with several more in testing. I added scent by scent, candle jar by candle jar until I had a large enough inventory to go to fairs with a single table. Sometimes it does not matter how slowly we go as long as we keep moving. Do not be discouraged by the speed of success.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Some time around a year ago I approached a local farm supply store. I went from producing a dozen candles in one pouring schedule to producing over a hundred pieces practically overnight. This meant adjusting my schedule to accommodate the orders. I was able to turn out enough units to fill the orders, but it became difficult over the next year as the wholesale orders grew to almost double the original quantity. I mentioned I began on a single countertop in my home, this was now expanded to the dedicated use of four folding tables as I tried to find ways to allow for the wax’s curing times and the expanding scent line. I just did what I had to do to make it work which meant spending a lot of time shuffling around all of my work equipment within my home. This year my decision to expand into a storefront was led heavily by the need to get my business supplies out of my home and into a more dedicated space to fill these growing orders. As many people can imagine, a storefront comes with overhead expenses to keep operational and this was a move I chose to postpone until my wholesale accounts could support at least most of these additional costs. This latest pivot has allowed me to build a custom area for pouring my products as well as an area for my wholesalers and customers to smell everything I offer in one place without hauling everything to multiple fairs every season, though we plan to keep a few of our favorites on the schedule.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.AgateEdgeCandleCo.com
- Instagram: @agateedge
- Facebook: @agateedge
