auntsadies

The real Aunt Sadie

Sat, 30 Mar 2024 17:45:55 GMT

I wish you had known her.

Aunt Sadie was neither fictitious nor my aunt, she was my grandmother. She wore pastel gingham dresses, her hair was always neatly pinned up and she had a distinct lovely fragrance, I can still smell it. . . an old fashioned soapy freshness with a sweet layer of peppermint entwined. My first memory of her is our family driving her to our home for a visit. My older brother and twin sister were in the back seat of the car with Grandma in the middle, next to me. I remember looking at her, thinking how much I loved her, then suddenly becoming very sad. She appeared so very old to this 4 year old boy and I feared I might not have her much longer. For 34 years after that car ride she remained in my life, living, loving, laughing, cooking and baking.

Grandma adored the kitchen and hopped at the opportunity to whip up a frosted cake or a batch of her signature chocolate chip cookies. I’m sure she baked well over 1000 of those scrumptious crunchy orbs just for me and when I shared them with friends and co-workers, if they raved about them, next time I saw her there’d be an extra batch tagged with their name on it. She also crocheted hundreds of metal clothes hangers as gifts, probably the only thing that exceeded the miles of yarn used was her spirit of generosity. I share that because that's what truly defined her, yet her life was one with virtually no-frills. She never owned a home or had a career, she was widowed at 40, lost her only daughter a few years later, and shared a small apartment with a sister for decades. Still, she cherished every day looking after and doing things for others. In my 68 years I’ve still not met anyone more selfless. I grew up in a town called Terryville, we weren’t poor or wealthy, there always seemed to be just enough. In the mid-1960s Grandma came into a small inheritance of about one thousand dollars. Rather than keep any of it for herself, she gave half to my father and half to my uncle so they could purchase color television sets for their families (it was a big leap back then from the world of black and white television we’d become accustomed to). She herself didn’t have a color television until 4-5 years later when they’d become more mainstream and affordable.

When she reached the age of 89 she asked me if anybody would remember her, her life was spent behind the scenes, out of any spotlight. I told her the family she created and nurtured her entire life was her legacy, but also promised that “people will know you were here Grandma”. Folks often ask “if she was your grandmother, why didn’t you name the company ‘Grandma’s Candles’”. Because it sounds too universal. When I was knee-high, I remember giggling as I heard my father’s cousins call her “Aunt Sadie”. Perhaps it sounded peculiar to me because my female classmates had names like Linda, Brenda and Debra and wore their hair long in pig and ponytails (it was the late 1950s/early 60s). She loved her name, we do too. And here we are, 27 years after creating Aunt Sadie’s, and between 1 and 2 million candles bearing your image and namesake have been sold around the globe. I think people know you were here Grandma.

Owning your own business

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 19:55:05 GMT

Do you like rollercoasters?

This year marks the start of Aunt Sadie’s 27th year in business. Over the years, we’ve often been asked by friends, family and strangers “What’s it like?” “Would you do it again?” “What’s the biggest challenge?”. Well, it’s like a rollercoaster ride, frightentening yet pleasurable, we’d do it again in a heartbeat, and everyday presents a new challenge, for us most of them feel big.

I was recently asked “what’s the one piece of advice you’d give to someone wanting to start their own business?” Are you willing to commit every waking hour of the first few (or 27) years of your life to this new business? If you are, you’re likely to discover a lot about yourself: an inner strength and resilience; coping skills you never realized you possessed; an ability to endure mammoth frustrations and survive the most dreaded failures. We’re betting the sense of achievement will surpass anything you might imagine.

Like many small businesses, Aunt Sadie’s started on a whim and desire to learn something new, not with the intention of “getting rich”. We didn’t have a solid business plan in place because our initial intention wasn’t to sell candles, it was to give them as holiday gifts. Our humble history began in a small Boston apartment kitchen, making candles over a hot stovetop. Although we had no idea what the “bones” of a wholesale business looked like, we had 2 critical things that are important when beginning any business: passion and an intrinsically small market of customers interested in our product. Those first years for us were clouded by financial woes and that loud ominous statistic that “most new businesses fail in the first 5 years”. Happily, against amazing odds, many new businesses survive the first 5 years and become vibrant businesses. Of course it’s not all puppies and ice cream after that, the challenges these past 15 years have knocked us off our not-so-high horses more than a few times. When Aunt Sadie’s survived the 2008 recession we liked to say “any small business that survived this recession can survive anything”. Obviously we weren’t expecting bazillions of new candle companies to suddenly emerge followed by a worldwide pandemic. Small businesses have to learn to adapt, reinvent, retool, revamp, and change their business models and strategies on a dime. That’s really the beauty of owning your own business, you hold the reins. You control the game plan. When push comes to shove, you put it all on the line.

Aunt Sadie’s has received thousands of emails over our 27-year history. Some have been critical. Thankfully, most have been complimentary. We get goosebumps when we receive an email from a valued customer like this, “Aunt Sadie’s Snowy Tree Candle has become a Holiday tradition in our home and without your candle, the Holidays would not be the same”. In our corporate values we mention making unique candles, using the best ingredients, honoring Aunt Sadie’s life and creating a happy positive workplace, but the one thing always driving our business has been to have fun. So here's our advice if you’re contemplating starting and owning your own business. . . go research, talk to friends/family/colleagues for feedback and support, and ask yourself if you have the passion, commitment and the resources to get it going and sustain it for the first year or two. Yes? Then for goodness sake, why are you still reading this, you’ve got a business to start.

It takes imagination and some keen noses to create a good candle.

Wed, 06 Mar 2024 15:04:55 GMT

Why our scents makes sense.

Like many things in business, our scents originate from ideas and suggestions, sometimes they’re ours and sometimes an employee’s, friend’s, relative’s or customer’s (such as you). Because scents are subjective, we need to be crystal clear what it is we’re wanting. As an example, when we introduced Tomato a few years back, we didn’t want a spaghetti sauce smell, we were aiming for an earthy tomato vine when-rubbed-between-your-fingers smell. Once we’ve defined which characteristics we want a scent to have, we’ll contact fragrance suppliers requesting samples. Within 3-4 weeks our desks are brimming with little glass vials, all different interpretations of the same scent. While it’s easy to identify rejects, the winning contender is often hundreds of sniffs away. Not to boast, but our collective schnozes can be astonishingly accurate. When everyone at Aunt Sadie’s holds their thumbs up in the air, we’re ready to begin test pours and burns, our many monthed labor has almost bred us a brand new candle.

While this explains the process, what really differentiates our scenting from some other candle makers is the caliber of our fragrance, we pay a premium for our scents. We made a decision 27 years ago if we were going to use fragrances, they would have to smell authentic (not synthetic). Every so often a company will solicit Aunt Sadie’s trying to lure us into the dark world of cheap spin-off scents, promising we’ll cut [some very big] corners from our raw material costs. Sorry, but Aunt Sadie never skimped on anything while baking or cooking and neither will we.

One last thing, you’ll notice part of Aunt Sadie’s signature authentic scenting is it might seem more subtle. Think of it this way: if a candle fragrance is overpowering, it’s like too much cologne, it feels like you’re just trying to cover up another smell that doesn’t belong there. And we’ve all been at that family gathering when second cousin so-and-so came in for a hug and you carried the scent of their perfume or cologne with you for the rest of the day. We like to think that a candle’s scent shouldn’t knock you over when you enter a room. . . it should get your attention, just enough to be ever-so-pleasing and memorable.