We recently connected with Reggie & Kena Odrick and have shared our conversation below.

Reggie & Kena, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you tell us about a time where you or your team really helped a customer get an amazing result?

We name most of our candles after different neighborhoods, cities, or views in the state of Virginia. We had a customer reach out to us saying how much she loved out Sunrise By The James and Sunset By The James candles. She stated that she not only adored the scent notes that were within the candle, but she also purchased the candle because it was the place that her children liked to visit the most. Her kids had passed away, but our candles were a way for her to gather peace and remember the good times she had with them. We never could imagine that our candle would have that type of power, but it’s such a reminder that you don’t know how your work can influence or move someone.

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?

We are Reggie and Kena Odrick and we are the owners of Hill And River Collection, a candle company based in the state of Virginia. Our company started off as a COVID pandemic project, but soon became a way to deal with grief. We had lost our son, Reid, in December 2019 and were really struggling with that loss. Hill And River Collection became a creative outlet and a way for us to connect with each other on a different level.

We took our love for fragrance and candles and began to learn how to make candles in our own way. Our candles are are soy blend, made with wooden wicks, and majority are mixed with 2-3 different fragrances. We also name most of our candles after different areas within the state of Virginia.

We are mostly proud of being able to grow our company and be able to be in business for over two years. We want our customers to not only know our candles, but get to know who we are outside of the brand. We aren’t just candlemakers, we have full time jobs, a new baby, and we want our customers to know that we can relate to them.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

We were in our early 20’s when we met. I, Kena, was planning on going out for my roommates, boyfriend’s birthday. Her boyfriend invited Reggie to go out with us. We hit it off from that day. That was in 2012. We got married in March 2019 and started forming our business in April 2020.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

We had no idea how to make candles when we started. We truly got started because we got a candle for our wedding anniversary that had a nice label, but we could barely smell it at all. From there we went to YouTube and did a lot of research. We bought supplies, and started making and testing candles in our kitchen. We still make our candles in our home. We have learned that manufacturing a product takes up a lot of space, so organization is key. We also learned that batch making is part of that organization. It also helps with time management.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.hillandrivercollection.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/hillandrivercollection
• Facebook: facebook.com/hillandrivercollection

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