how to start a luxury candle company 6.
What's my vibe?
If I haven’t stressed how important your brand story is to your new luxury candle line yet, let me just say it again, YOU NEED A STORY. It will and should inform all your brand decisions, from design and packaging to your product choices.
Let’s assume you have a brand story, let’s even go back to the space theme, we are now getting into the design phase of your line, what’s your brand vibe
Do you want your line minimal and modern? Futuristic and robotic? Nostalgic and vintage-looking? Or maybe computer/electronic inspired? (Just to name a few). Your designer will want to know your brand vibe (brand aesthetic, style) so that they can present options and ideas to you. Words are lovely but we all know that what “modern” looks like in my mind is not necessarily what “modern” looks like in yours (I’m told some people don’t even picture stuff in their head, what’s that about? :-).
Years ago someone told me that her new apartment was SUPER modern… when I saw it, it was white, everything was painted white, it wasn’t modern, it was just white, see what I mean? In my experience, the quicker we can move away from words and the sooner that I can start showing my clients concrete design choices/ideas the faster the process goes and the more exciting it gets. You will still need words to describe to your designer what you are thinking, but this is a great time to whip out reference material, and it definitely doesn’t need to be another candle brand, but it can be the image of a room, a car, a machine, a toaster, a boat… because it’s about the vibe now, not about replicating. Get yourself a good designer and they will understand what you are showing them and how to translate that vibe into your new candle line.
Now this part might sound weird, but do you have to LOVE everything about the vibe of your brand? Do you have to want every single one of your products in your home? Unpopular opinion, but my answer is NOPE.
You might have an incredible niche product you know will sell like crazy but is not necessarily your thing, nothing wrong with that folks!
I don’t tell everyone this, but I will tell you…
As you know, much of the work I do is for fragrance companies, whether personal or home fragrance, but here’s a fun fact, I’m VERY sensitive to fragrance. I don’t use personal fragrance on myself and although I can burn some fragranced candles in my home, it’s rare. (When I was doing the photography for Eleven Point, they would pour the candles they sent to me at a lower fragrance percentage so that I could “handle” the scents while I was working with the candles) I KNOW RIGHT?????
But, I freaking LOVE these industries and I love working with fragrance companies and I love to design the packaging and solving all the problems and challenges and creating beauty, I also love how incredibly passionate my fragrance clients are about fragrance! (Like I am about their packaging!)
If you go back to the story of the potential client who didn’t have a brand story, so the olfactive designer and I created one for her, part of the issue was that she didn’t feel completely connected to the story. Personally, I don’t think that needs to be a deal breaker, she would have definitely connected to elements of it and that can be enough to be passionate about. I had a successful line of kid products 10 years before I every had a baby. How about some hugely successful clothing brands with styles that their CEO would never be caught dead wearing? What about all the fragrance that is sold at the mass retailers like Walmart? It’s not for everyone, but it IS for a lot of people, nothing wrong with that.
So yeah, this was a bit of a tangent, but I felt it had to be said, don’t get too coo coo crazy about whether or not each and every product you make is for YOU. I know that we have all heard those company owners saying, I wouldn’t make something for my clients that I wouldn’t want to own myself… blah blah, yeah, whatever, we aren’t all the same, it’s OK.
When it comes to your vibe, remember, it’s your brand, it can be 100% based on YOU, or not at all, what I am talking about is your brand, your product line, and how it’s going to express your brand story and how it will resonate with your clients, this is what is going to pull them in, get their attention and hopefully compel them to buy what you are selling. It’s important, it needs to make sense quickly (most people will walk by a ton of products to get to the one that is catching their eye!)
Now go find your brand vibe and align it with your story.
Ok, good talk.
