On growing your passion into a business without losing your enthusiasm

Tell me about the first time you made a candle and how that experience led you to founding your business?

The first time I ever made a candle was with a candle-making kit that I stole from my sister. She had gotten the kit from Michael’s, and was selling candles at her home-ec fair in eighth grade. She made really cool stuff using paraffin wax or whatever she could get. I remember her pouring them into weird vessels like takeout containers. I love to craft and make things and I spent my after-school time at the craft store taking classes. After graduating from college, Etsy was starting to take off and I wanted to start an Etsy shop of my own. I thought, what can I make? I’ll make candles. So I bought some vintage molds and used my own molds too. The vintage aspect really speaks to the nostalgic ethos that P.F. still has, and this DIY spirit where I’m like, “What can I do? I’m going to make that.”

Have you been able to maintain that DIY spirit as the business has grown?

It’s so tricky. I was recently talking to a friend who just opened a rock store, and it’s so cool. He’s such a rock nerd in the best way, and I had the thought that he’d made this grave error of turning his passion and creativity into a business. But, he’s got this really specific vision in how he’s executing it. It’s so clear he’s not only trying to make money, but also to bring his vision to life.

There’s definitely been times throughout my career of making things where I felt super disconnected from what we were actually doing because I was busy running the business, so I try to carve out time to make things, and it’s not always candles. I also make incense. I have an entire craft closet. I’m always trying to paint with my daughter and do things that feel easy and that keep my hands busy, it helps turn off my mind.

What have you gained by growing your passion into a business? Have you had to sacrifice anything in the process?

I’ve gained so much through the process of growing P.F. I’ve been able to do my Etsy shop dream, and it’s such a funny job, I run a candle company. I don’t necessarily remember a moment where I thought, I’m going to grow the business. At the beginning I was very scrappy and took every opportunity that came our way. Of course, there were also conscious choices that led to growth, like taking on bigger orders, scaling, and hiring staff. Having started my business in the bottom of the recession in 2008, I operated on a scarcity mentality where I was so afraid that I wouldn’t get these opportunities again. We were like let’s grow, let’s hustle, and it felt fun. As we were growing very rapidly, I remember that we felt like it was going by so fast that we didn’t get to enjoy the moments where we were a ten person company.

Now we’re in a more stable time, we’re not in that rapid growth phase anymore. What I really like about this phase is that I get to enjoy the size that we are and feel the benefits of being this size, versus being a larger company. We were up to 95 people at one point, and that’s a really different type of company to run. In the beginning,[husband and business partner] Tom and I definitely sacrificed having a lot of friends. We had just moved to downtown LA, so we were in a new place, and it took us a really long time to make a group of friends because we were so focused on the business. I am happy to report I do have some friends now.

The scents you develop feel like direct channels to nature. Do your fragrances result from pointed research or do ideas arise by osmosis, through spending time in nature?

The osmosis thing is real. Nature is a huge source of inspiration, and I always say our scents smell very true to life. I don’t want them to be too cloying or overpowering. My sister-in-law and Tom are so sensitive to fragrance, so keeping it very light and smelling as true to life as possible is a goal of ours.

For our Hi-Fi Collection, which is our premium line, we pull all of the fragrance inspiration from fine fragrance by looking at what’s really popular in perfumery right now, and trying to create fragrances based on that. Skin scents are also huge. What would a light musky scent in a candle look like, and how would that apply to home fragrance? We’re still not doing body fragrance. We’ve dabbled in it, but our niche is obviously home scent and you want those to smell very different. Trying to pull inspiration from perfumery when those scents settle so differently on the skin than in wax is very fun.

Can you talk about your materials and the importance of sourcing?

We use soy wax. I think it’s cool that it’s grown here in America and that it’s lowering our carbon footprint to use it. I went to the factory where it’s made a couple years ago and saw it transformed from oil. They ran it through this 13 story whirling machine to purify it, essentially. They then ran it over an ice roller to turn it into flakes. It was so fascinating.

In terms of other materials, it’s about understanding where things are coming from. As I learned more about perfumery and I started looking at our MSDS [material safety data sheet] differently, I was really able to start recognizing some of the ingredients and familiarize myself with the different compounds and how they make up the structure of the fragrances. I felt a deepening [connection to my materials] when I started to understand the MSDS from the ingredient standpoint too. Connecting to the materials makes you feel connected to the process. For the incense workshop I’m teaching, we’re making it from scratch using a Mako powder in the base, and then adding in different plant materials. I have all of this sage growing in my front yard right now and I was cutting it back because it was overgrown, and I realized that I could use it for the workshop. It smells so good. I’m really excited to say I grew this sage and now we’re using it as a fragrant material.

Do you ever collaborate with other makers?

We love to host makers at our shop and to me that’s giving back because it’s how I got my start. In terms of collaborations, we just started doing that a couple years ago. We’ve collaborated with everyone from Toy Machine to Peanuts. We just collaborated with a cycling brand this year, Grin27. They’re a super small operation, really cool and niche. And we just did one with Sempervirens, which is a Redwoods conservation agency. We’re working on one coming out later this year that I can’t leak yet, it’s a food collaboration. Things come our way and sometimes it’s such a cool opportunity and can also feel so random. We get the opportunity to create a profile based on something that you wouldn’t think has a smell like with Toy Machine, it was the smell of the maple they use in their skateboard decks.

That’s so cool! What a nice way to keep the energy fresh and expand the way you consider what a scent can be.

I completely agree. This is the biggest thing collaborations have been for us. You would think that getting a request to make a scent based on these specific things would be a box, but it actually allows you to shine because you’re creating something that is out of your wheelhouse. That’s how we really started exploring different angles, and some of our new scents are things that were cast offs from collaborations that we’d worked on that didn’t go through, but the scent was incredible and a new vein for us.

The other thing that I’ve been getting more into is workshops. I’m teaching them myself, and it’s been so fun to get back into the candle making aspect of it that I don’t feel I usually have time for. That is my space where I really experiment. I’ll pull five to eight fragrances for the class and it will be designed for whoever I’m co-hosting with. In class, I’m not only getting to blend my own fragrances, but I’m seeing the reactions of everybody around the room to all of these different types of scents and learning more by being in person, and it reminds me of my roots when I did craft fairs. It’s been a really fun thing from me, a very different outcome of what I had expected going in.

The community building aspect must be an important element in keeping the spark around your work alive.

It feels like moving into a teaching role. When I’m preparing for these workshops, I’ll do a lot of research on the materials that we’re using, and it’s in that process that I feel really passionate and excited. I guess I’m kind of a nerd, too. I can’t wait to share these fragrance packs with people. And I don’t know whether it’s landing, but when you speak to someone who’s so passionate about what they’re doing and so excited about the knowledge that they’re sharing, you can feel it.

I’m sure it’s landing for people! Scent is so important, it connects us to memory and nostalgia in unique ways. Can you talk a bit more about your personal relationship to scent and what power you think it holds?

I really recognize the nostalgic aspect of it, and I like to use it to bookend periods of my life. If I’m going through a bad or stressful time I stop wearing all perfumes and become aware of what fragrances I’m using at my house on repeat, because I don’t want to lose a favorite scent to a sad time. It’s such a bizarre thing, but it is so fun the way that scent can encapsulate entire chapters.

I have a fragrance that I made with a natural perfumer here in LA at one of the first perfume workshops that I did. I called it Big Sur and I wore it for pretty much two years. It reminds me so much of building a business because I wore it to work, and it was a time when I was really investing in myself, learning more about fragrance and not just being a maker, but being able to present myself knowing about fragrance and perfume as well. Smelling it brings back this hit of nostalgia. It’s all the ambient scents that surround you and the laundry detergent and weird niche things, cleaning agents. I like to mix my own stuff for that. I also make my own face oils. I love thinking about creating these scents that by layering them, become so deeply personal to you.

What kind of impact do you hope you’re having on people’s lives through your company and your teaching?

My first impact would be on my staff and my team. When Tom and I set out to grow the company we didn’t really realize what we were doing, but we knew that we wanted to earn enough to make a living for ourselves. First and foremost I want to make sure that I am providing for our staff, making sure we’re paying them well and creating a good atmosphere. We’re doing fully subsidized healthcare. The second thing is allowing people to access luxury candles at an accessible price point. That’s my balancing act, is to pay my team well enough to make these incredible products, but also get [the candles] priced well enough that they can hit the market and people can burn them every day.

The unexpected thing about working in fragrances is that sometimes you’re just running the business, you’re like, “I’m just making these things, do people like it?” Then someone says, “Your candle was there during this really hard period of my life,” or “We used these scents during our wedding,” and you realize that people tie fragrance to their memories, and it can be this source of comfort or this little luxury that they’re using every day that cheers them up. That’s the really cool thing that I’ve been trying to stay connected to. I’ve been working in the shops more so that I can basically gossip with the customers. I want to know everything, I want them to tell me their life story. I love chatting to people.

It sounds like you’re doing a great job at remaining connected to why you started this project in the first place—it’s hard to do while things grow and evolve.

Oh, absolutely. I came up in that girl boss era. I had my craft fair friends, and then when I stopped doing craft fairs and didn’t see them as much, I remember thinking, “Who is my community?” Then I started seeing a lot of people getting investment and growing and selling their business. It felt more like what they were selling was the business itself versus being connected to the product and wanting to be conscious of what they were bringing into the world. It’s just a different kind of mindset. I’ve really tried to stay close to what we’re doing and what we’re making.

Do you have a vision for the future of P.F. Candle Co.?

I’m thinking about the vision all the time, but this year, I will be completely honest that with all the changes that have happened, having to navigate constant shifts from the administration, I just have to live in the present. I feel like this is the year of the present and just trying to navigate down the river. I think a lot about the growth for P.F. and what I want for it, and what I’ve been connecting with is opening more retail stores.

It feels like a return to our roots, and I love creating the spaces, interiors; that’s my happy space. I’ve been thinking about how the product connects to those interior spaces and trying to continue to bring those to life in our retail stores so people have a space that they feel inspired by and connected to. I love the retail store. I love a good shopping experience, when you go in and you feel like you have incredible service. You make a connection with the person working there, and they know what they’re talking about, and you get excited. It’s like my rock guy. I love rocks anyway, but he made me so excited. And then we have a new scent that I’m very excited about because it’s a very P.F. scent, so when we talk about getting back to your roots, that’s what this year feels like, getting back to our roots.