Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kevin & Brighty Norman. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Kevin & Brighty , appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

As gift givers and supporters of our community, Kevin and I thought it was important to launch a business that meets several goals: for us to create and make quality products, sell them for reasonable prices, support other local and non local small owned businesses and to create a family environment that is open to all. Prior to our jobs closing down and relocating during covid, we decided to come up with a business that would sell our own handcrafted candles and items along with products from other small owned businesses. After giving birth to our daughter Brooklyn in 2017 and learning that she was hard of hearing, we quickly realized that working full time for other companies did not allow us the hands-on experience of parenting, flexibility for appointments and family time we needed. Our creativity was at an all time low and there wasn’t much flexibility and time for all the things we valued and wanted to do as a family. Kevin and I who both worked for large corporate companies knew from day 1 that this business of ours MUST impact other families as well, It is our mission to help others through buying wholesale from small businesses just like us and we do! For Mother’s Day and during the holiday Season I source what we call filler items (bath bombs, lotions, shower steamers, wax melts, and more) from other creators and business owners and we do a make your own gift box at our local farmer’s market. The make your own gift boxes has been not only a great collab between us and other companies but it has shown us that people really do love learning about and buying from small businesses and our company is the bridge between them. Giving is a daily natural act that both Kevin and I do without thinking so it only feels right for our business to give back to others. Kevin and I also have a heartfelt desire to help the homeless. We knew there had to be a way to do this and get others involved. For the past 3 Septembers we announced that 50% of the revenue from the Hippie Chick Collection (made in honor of my late mother) would be donated to a local kitchen where my mom would give hours of service with her girlfriends from her church. last year my mother’s niece and her husband (local business owners) and my mother’s pastor matched our donation. Our mission is to give give give through our business, and to make sure that everyone can afford cleanly made and sustainable home fragrance products.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Kevin was doing masonary work and I was managing an operations team for an intermodal shipping company. At home we did a ton of painting, arts, crafts, and enjoyed hiking and being out in nature. When we had Brooklyn things changed drastically for us. We had a lot of appointments with the audiologist, doctors, hearing aid specialist, early start teachers, and testing centers. My job was not happy with the amount of appointments I had to leave for. When my mom passed when Brooklyn was 11 months old, we put her in daycare. Brooklyn started getting sick like clock work every 2 to 4 weeks. Her colds came with high fevers, respiratory issues, and ear infections, often landing us in over night ER visits. This was when both of our jobs started coming down heavy on us for calling in. We were at a point to where we had to ask ourselves, who can call in today without being fired. It was a terrifying thing to go through but our baby girl came first. This was when I told Kevin that we need a business so that I can find a part time job and be home more with Brooklyn. I thought a boutique would be fun and he asked “what if I want to work the business and eventually be home with you girls?” And that was when I said… let’s do candles. When Kevin and I got married and moved in together we would go home decor shopping and drive an hour north of us to San Jose or even as far as San Francisco to go find quality and cleanly made candle shops. There weren’t any around us and shopping for them online was getting expensive. We would buy buy buy and never find anything that we actually loved. We noticed everyone was trying to make extremely strongly scented perfume type candles but our love for subtle scents of nature was not ever available. We leaned more towards classic and masculine scents, like jasmine, lavender, sandalwood, heather, and more. True to their scents, heart felt, memory triggering classic scents were really hard for us to find. We burn soy candles because they are easier on our allergies and asthma so we decided to share with the world the scents we love. We eventually found a following of people also struggling to find their favorite classic scents. Our first year in business was strictly testing soy waxes and scents. We laugh about this now but it took us 7 fragrance oil companies to find the right “dirty lavender” and 8 companies to find the warm, classic, non synthetic smelling Vanilla. We are proud of our scents. We know that our color-less, minimalistic candles don’t scream look at me… but it’s the true to scent classic, woodsy, masculine, fresh scents that attract people to us. The stories and memories people tell us while shopping with us and events and markets makes that entire year of testing and errors completely worth it for us. Our scents aren’t the only thing that attract people to us. Our humble and family oriented personalities bring people back because we are truly just wanting to build a family like community around us. We don’t like the word customers… we call them all family, the 40 Acre Family.

How did you build your audience on social media?

In my mind, I was never going to have a “sucessful” social media page. I do not dance, sing, and I’m not good with punch lines or hooks. I felt like people wanted to be entertained and “I was not put on this earth to entertain people”. That was my thinking. We also do not have a big lavish house, a lot of money to travel, buy things for reviews or anything else. I checked out on social media before even trying. One day my friend who is a fierce proud latina marketer told me “go live, your posts suck, you overthink things, but in person you are raw, warm, and fun.” This was when I started live sales. They went okay but they helped me tremedously on my confidence in front of a camera. That was my first step into being myself on social media instead of posting what I think people want to see. I changed our social media name to 40 Acre Family because my posts about our family day trips, frugal living, receipes and behind the scenes got way more views than just the pictures of our candles. Yes, we want people to buy our products but we are patient people and know that all of our hard work will pay off in sales some day. Right now we feel that both our family and people around us need an extended family, supportive community, help with saving money on groceries, ideas for low cost day trips, shoes and clothing sales and more. People need connections and support and we are here to give and recieve that from others through our social media. Our social media grew from 1k followers to 4k in a little over 2 years. That was success for me. Being myself on social media brings in my tribe of who also live the same frugal life as we do. Little did I know that these same people would be our biggest supporters and inspirations.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

The most effective way for growing our clientele has been Farmer’s Markets, local vendor events, and selling at a local co-op. We also use google business and social media. My grandfather and grandmother were a successful produce market owners and my grandfather told me that people are never ever going to forget how you make them feel. I have always lead with this idea and I offer a warm and inviting market set up and I stand up and converse with everyone who enters our booth. Not every person walking in turns into a sale but we are perfectly fine with that. We have made very strong connections with people who now feel like family and they go and tell everyone they know about us. Since I am not the best with social media, we have relied heavily on connections and word of mouth and it has worked well for us.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.shop40acre.com
• Instagram: @40acrefamily
• Facebook: 40 Acre Candle & Gift Co.