Failure, Challenges, & Slides: BTS of the Forage Collection

When we look at our campaign photos, we don't just see the shiny, styled takes on our candles—we see the result of months, sometimes years, of hard work, failure, and dedication to getting it right.

It feels important to share the latter with our community, to peel back the curtain and talk about what it's like to be an entrepreneur trying to build something special—or, in broader terms, people failing and trying again. 

We're spotlighting our Forage Collection this month, so we figured we'd talk about some BTS facts we've never shared! 

#1 - Forage Started as a Challenge

For some reason, we wanted to see if we could create a line using only essential oils. Blame it on the engineering background, but working with constraints (and arbitrary rules like: each candle must have 5 essential oils and there can be no overlap whatsoever) gets us fired up.

# 2 - Then it Became a Story

To inspire the blends, we built a narrative. Our collections are inspired by journeys, and as an ode to essential oils that one might forage for (get it?!), we looked to the great American roadtrip as our muse. That's how we came up with each candle: Nord would call to mind the forests up North, Sur would capture the sunny states, Oest would embody the rainy west coast, and Este would be the fresh East Coast.

# 3 - We Had to Build a Slide

When we created Forage, we were still working out of Vic's parents' basement. At this point we were getting pallets delivered in the driveway and at 50 lbs a box, we had to get smart about getting the wax downstairs without breaking our backs. Cue: the slide. We built a system to get the boxes down to the basement and then started messing with wax...

#4 - The Problem with Candles

Funnily enough, the real problems started when we tried to turn our scents into candles. When we created the oil blends, we'd sit across from each other making versions, smell them, let them sit, tweak them until we were happy. But once we added them to wax and lit them, we realized that oils are actually tricky to burn because the smell evaporates at low temperatures. 

We learned that certain oils (like patchouli) have heavy molecules that can dampen the flame—Este, for example, would just keep going out! We had to play with quantities for months before perfecting the mix.

# 5 - It Doesn't End at Launch

About a year after we first released Forage we ran into more challenges when our new packaging was lost at sea for 6 months. The joys of supply chain during a pandemic!

Eventually, the crates made their way to our studio and we have to admit, each challenge in the process just made this line even more special to us. 

Thanks for taking the time to read this post! We'd love to know what you want to see next so drop us a comment or shoot us a DM.