We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Victoria & Vanessa a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Victoria & Vanessa, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Our story began like most others; my twin sister and I always had desires to be small business owners. Both our grandmother and our mother are entrepreneurs themselves (they own an interior design business for 30+ years) and we felt that it was meant to be. We had the idea in late 2018 to attempt to make our own candles. We were always candle lovers ourselves, so we felt it would be fun to try and make them ourselves. After about a year of rigorous testing, we had our formula down. Our candles burned very well, and smelled great. We felt we were at the point we might be able to sell them successfully! Our company would be called “Dulceria Candle Company” many people wonder about our name. We originally intended on selling “hispanic dessert themed” scents (our mother is Cuban and born in Cuba, her and our family immigrated here in 1984) and in spanish, the word “Dulceria” means sweet shop. This is also a small nod to our grandmother who would sing us a childrens lullaby that would also mention the term “Dulceria” so that word holds a soft spot in our heart.

We found at a local shop some plain glass tumblers that we agreed would be our staple vessel for our candles. This was also now 2019 and in the thick of COVID, so supply chain issues were rampant in the candle making community. Vessels were scarce, and lids were scarce as well. We showed our mom the vessels but her only concern was that it did not have a lid.

How were we going to find lids for this random glass jar? Just then we had a crazy idea. What if we made a lid? We used our Cricut machine to make simple, paper dust covers. They were cute and sufficient but ultimately not something we felt was good in the long term. So what if we made lids out of wood? That would be more stable! But how are we going to do that? Victoria’s husband suggested a laser. But neither one of us knew how to even use one! But my sister and I have always been go getters and love to learn, so we were crazy enough to buy a small laser and get to work!

We successfully created a wood lid with our logo engraved on it and a rigid foam gasket affixed to it. The gasket ensured that the lid to the candle would fit “snugly” and not fall off. We belonged to various candle making groups on facebook, so Victoria decided she would go on one day and share our creation to the groups just to show off our little project with no intention to sell the lids. Within hours she had hundreds of comments asking if she would be willing to sell the lids, as many other candle makers also wanted lids for their candle vessels.

We quickly began to add our very small inventory of lids to our website. Once we let everyone know that they went live, the orders began to pop up. It was quite overwhelming and exciting! We were one of only two other candle lid makers within the candle making community. However, we offered something completely unique that the others did not. Our lids came in 3 color finishes, had the option to be engraved AND fit snugly. Our website now offers lids for over 40 different candle vessels, and we now have 6 different finishes!

Our company name has now been rebranded as DULCERIA CREATIONS to fit our brand better, as our specialty is making beautiful creations! It has now been 3 years since we began selling our special candle lids, and we have since expanded to candle vessels, candle wax, wicks, fragrance oils, and many other candle making supplies. We wanted our website to be a “one stop shop” when it came to candle making. I don’t think we ever would of dreamt that a simple candle lid would of lead us into our candle supply business today. It has been a lot of blood, sweat and tears, but my sister and I have really fought for our company and worked incredibly hard to get to where we are today. We never gave up, and what kept us going is that we truly believed in our company when sometimes others didn’t.

Victoria & Vanessa, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Our company is Dulceria Creations. We are a full candle supply small business based out of central Florida, shipping all over the continental United States. Our specialty is custom engraved, wooden candle lids, however we now offer our own line of unique candle vessels, wax, and fragrance oils amongst other candle supply products.

It is just my sister and I along with help from both of our amazing husbands and now our wonderful mother and father have been helping us as well. Their assistance has been invaluable in keeping our production going! What sets our company apart is that we will always provide exceptional, one on one customer service almost any time of the day. We believe in treating our customers the way we would want to be treated, and we also believe that our customers are our most valuable component to our business because they truly help us grow and prosper.

We are proud to be woman, and twin sister owned. One thing that sets us apart from other candle supply companies is that we provide a full service, laser engraving option to our custom made wood lids. We also charge zero setup fee and no outrageous order minimums. We pride ourselves on our work, and every order is created with love just like if it was our own, whether you have a small starter company, or a well known, larger brand; no order is too small or too big for us.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I think what has helped us most in building our reputation has been having excellent communication with our costumers and being fully transparent at all times.

I think the days are over of people wanting to deal with giant corporations where you constantly get flipped from one call center to another where ultimately no one really cares if you get helped or your issues are resolved. People want to talk to real people! When our customers reach out with inquiries, they will always hear back from us normally within the same day, and most times immediately.

If there are any mistakes with an order (which is rare, but it definitely happens!) We fix it immediately, no questions asked. If we are out of stock of an item, we keep our customers up to date, and make sure they know what’s going on and when to expect a restock.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

Yes! Dulceria Creations was absolutely a side hustle in the beginning!

My twin sister and I worked full time as lab medical assistants at our local inner city trauma hospital for over 10 years before this. I think towards the end we began to wonder, is there something more out there for us?

We also became moms in 2019 (we each have a little boy) and I think between motherhood, and the stress of COVID in the hospitals, we were very determined to move on to the next level in our lives. We just weren’t sure what that would be.

Right before we quit our regular jobs, I remember one day I looked at my sister while we were sitting in the lab, and I told her,
“Vicky, if we keep treating Dulceria as a side hustle, it will forever remain a side hustle.” Right then and there we knew what we needed to do. We put in our two weeks and jumped head first into our company, and it was the best thing we ever did.

Although being a business owner means working pretty much around the clock, we still have the freedom to be flexible in our schedules, and spend time with our boys which is the most rewarding of all!

Some ways we have helped scale our business is by being on preferred vendor lists within the candle making community (generally vendors on this list are pre-screened) in the beginning we did giveaways to help build our email lists (email contacts are EVERYTHING) and we also invested in a product photographer (Taylor Dunworth with the Sunshine Creative if anyone needs product photography in central FL!) I am 100% confident that also helped boost our sales and I highly recommend this to help boost customer confidence.

One of our key milestones in going from side hustle to full time business owners, was being able to bring in enough revenue to not only keep our business running (inventory, supplies etc) but to be able to pay ourselves fairly and CONSISTENTLY.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.dulceriacreations.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dulceriacreations/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dulceriacreations/
• Other: This our private facebook group, The Dulceria Creations Collective https://www.facebook.com/groups/242026781776848

Image Credits
Taylor Dunworth – The Sunshine Creative