how to start a luxury candle company 5.
You smell with your eyes... What now?
A fragrance expert with whom I have the privilege of working quite often, Bart Schmidt, taught me early in my candle designing career that, most people smell with their eyes! Before anyone picks up a candle to smell it, they are going to look at the vessel, look at the packaging, look at the label (if there is one) and read it or interpret a pattern ie: a rose pattern.
Let’s say there are 4 candles on a shelf at a store, and you are drawn in by the packaging, but you can’t stand the smell of roses and you see the name Rose Garden on the label, will you be rushing to smell it?
If you see that same candle and you are drawn in by the packaging and the vessel (you still can’t stand roses!) but this label says Summer Morning, Prairie or Once upon a Time?…. Will one of those fragrance names intrigue you enough to pick it up and smell it?
I am not saying you should NEVER mention your fragrance notes in your fragrance name, I am also not saying that there aren’t some VERY successful candle and home fragrance brands that do exactly this. What I AM saying is that this is worth spending some time thinking about in regards to YOUR line.
Going back to your story for a minute. You are passionate about outer space and you want your candle line’s story to be based on outer space. Let’s say that it will all tie together from the candle vessels to the fragrance names to the outer box packaging (in the shape of a rocket! Obviously). You are NOT going to name your fragrances Rose Garden, Bergamot and Vanilla and Citrus Breeze, right? (Hopefully you will never name your fragrances like this, but I digress…) You are going to try to tie in your outer space theme and your fragrance naming - so even if you might have a base, middle or top note of Rose somewhere in your fragrance, you might use names like : Starlight, Cosmo, Aurora or Luna. You can then name a few fragrance notes on your packaging or on your e-commerce site for more info, but you have probably intrigued enough potential buyers to pick up your candle and smell it, or read more about each one of your bespoke fragrances by attracting them with interesting and creative fragrance names that work with your story.
What about numbering your fragrances? Sure, you can do this and we know that there are a lot of candle companies that do this, but if you can come up with some super memorable, creative fragrance names, why number them? (Unless numbers are a big part of your story, then yeah, number them). Memorable and remarkable are really good things when it comes to your luxury candle line.
Take some time, do a deep dive on candle fragrance names and naming, you will learn a lot. Figure out what you like, what you don’t like and how to be original and memorable and most importantly, how your fragrance naming will add to the story of your brand.
