how to start a luxury candle company 4.
10 ideas to inspire your brand story for your new luxury candle company
1. Be snarky - That’s right. Come up with a story that some will love and some will hate, be divisive if that’s who you are, GO WITH IT. Sometimes being in your own badass lane is the way to go, you won’t please everyone, but that is 100% ok. As a matter of fact, sometimes pleasing the people who really get you is the way to go, they will be loyal and love what you do and keep buying what you are selling. You’ll stand out!
2. Be niche - Yup, you love outer space? Go with it! I would have had more inspiration designing a candle line based on outer space than on nothing, or watered down what’s-already-been-done like in my last post. Think about cool space themed vessels and cool space themed fragrance names and think about all the fun, cool, space themed marketing you can do. It will be out of this world (sorry ;-)
3. Be global - You wouldn’t be the first, but you can put your spin on it, be worldly, take exciting trips around the world with your brand (or stay where you feel best, in one country! Or literally, in the country), you can focus (beaches), you can zoom in (spices), you can differentiate (different languages for your fragrance naming), our world is small, but there is so much you can pull from it in terms of inspiration!
4. Be a story teller - make up a story! Literally write. a. story. The more chapters you write the more material you get. What if you used your story to get people following and hooked on social media first? Then your readers would be invested in your characters and their story lines, then like magic, you have different fragrances and collections based on what you have shared and your readers want to live in those worlds through the fragrances that you sell! It can be based on a love story (or love triangle!), an inspirational feel-good story, an epic saga or if you are into true crime podcasts (like me), GO WITH IT! Find a hook in a true crime story and go with that, what would Jeffrey Dahmer’s life have been like if he was a woodworker in upstate NY and not a serial killer?… see how this works?
(I’m already hooked, please someone write THAT story)
5. Be poetic - you love poetry, do a candle line based on the poetry you love! (Do your due diligence in terms of copyrights please) but you can certainly be inspired by the great poets! I mean fragrance and poetry, it’s almost the same but different right?
6. Be artistic - What if you partnered with an amazing potter or ceramic artist and your candle vessels were the story? You could take this a step further and have each vessel collection have it’s own story based on the art of the vessels. Or, each vessel could even be more literal, like a face, and then you could create a collection based on different faces, the faces could create a village or could circle back to being global and they could represent different people in our world, different colours, different defining features, different women faces, different men faces, different old people, different HUGE noses sticking out of the vessels 3 dimensionally (noses + fragrances)… see where I am going?
7. Be exclusive - that’s right, number your candles / vessels and make them all special edition and exclusive, you can do this alone via your fragrances or you can team up with artists/brands to use their art and your hustle! Once this batch is sold, it’s sold, you snooze, you lose! Create urgency with the beauty of your line.
8. Be controversial - have crazy political ideas? Or maybe you like to make fun of people with crazy ideas or ways of acting in the world. Go with it! Again, not everyone will get it or like it, but sometimes the big risks pay off. If you are funny and smart about it, you will find your audience.
9. Be inspiring - I'm not talking Live, Laugh, Love, HECK NO! Find great quotes, they can be topic specific depending on your candle collections, or they can all be random but meaningful. This idea is great when it comes to gifts because sometimes when you are looking for something special for a friend or someone you love, a great quote can say it all, because it’s meaningful or just because it relates to your relationship.
10. Be the thoughts in your mind (AKA, Be Weird) - I hope one day to have a client who wants to do a line based on their weird thoughts, and hopefully their thoughts are funny. You know, we all think we are so original, but trust, others are thinking the same thing, and that’s where it gets interesting. Take this a step further and make sure the design aspect totally contradicts the story - I love that kind of tension. For example, a beautifully stately, established, old school elegant design for a very current of the moment fragrance name.
