We were lucky to catch up with Estefany Gallego recently and have shared our conversation below.

Estefany, appreciate you 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 has always been a huge and important factor for Velitas. We always want to produce quality candles and we do this by constantly practicing and testing our craft to improve. As the business scales and more wholesale orders come in, it’s important for us to create an effective schedule, be considerate of time management, creating a plan and putting our plan to work. When we have an efficient process flowing along with a plan, it creates the platform we need to maintain the quality of our products.

Estefany, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

It was the year 2017 and I was a stay at home Mom, living in an apartment taking care of my two children. I needed a creative outlet and came across the craft of candle making. What started as a candle making hobby creating candles with my infant Sons recycled food jars, transformed into the candle making business we are today which we call Velitas. Velitas translated means little candles, an everlasting reminder of where I started from in my apartment kitchen pouring hot wax in small, baby glass food jars.

Velitas launched in 2019 hand-crafting all candles with natural soy wax, premium fragrances, and cotton wicks. We created our labels to be comprised of bilingual-themed names and taglines as a way to represent, honor and celebrate our Latinx culture. Velitas also creates customized candles for businesses to provide a unique and unforgettable approach for their clients and business branding. Sometimes we don’t put much thought into candles, but how many times will your customers hold, smell, and light your candle? I am guessing a lot!

I am extremely proud of how far along Velitas has come. We continuously practice within our craft in order to improve, better our best, and provide quality product. We are grateful for the support we have had within the last couple of years from our customers and community!

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

Velitas manufactures all of our candles and wax melts. Through out the years we have faced trial and error but being in a continuous state of practice helped us achieve a quality product, which we continue to improve on to this day. Creating a product from the ground up isn’t always easy but having a persistent and consistent approach has helped tremendously. We also manufacture customized candles for businesses and other events. With the customization of product for others, we have come across a few lessons throughout our time doing this. Some of the lessons have been: undertaking a huge project within a short time frame, setbacks due to supply shortage, and adhering to set procedures from beginning to end. Being innovative, strategic, and thinking outside the box has been a huge help along with constant communication. It has all been a learning process, but that was to be expected!

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

When the pandemic hit, Velitas had not been in business for even one year! This was a near death moment for my business because I did not think we would survive. There were supply shortages, significant price increases for materials due to changes in supply and demand, people lost their jobs which ultimately led to sales plummeting. My family and I got sick with Covid which meant, we had to shut down until we were in the clear to get things running again. I did get discouraged but my determination and passion for this business did not let up. The support from family, friends, and the community never faltered. The small business grant from the YWCA came through. And for all of that, I am eternally GRATEFUL.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.velitasrei.com
• Instagram: @velitasrei
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/velitasrei
• Twitter: @velitasrei

Image Credits
Image credits: @acantaychristian.visuals and @regalfiercemedia