At the beginning of lockdown there was a shortage of toilet rolls, but now there appears to be a global shortage of wax to make candles.
Many appear to have taken a creative path, diverting themselves from the incessant day to day of lockdown, but one woman has turned her creativity into a new business in the Pentland Hills.
Nadine Pierce has just launched her website, and she was still excited about it when we talked. Pentland Aromatics is a new business which sells candles and diffusers to make working from home a more fragrant experience. All of these lovely items can be bought as something to cheer yourself up, or sent as a gift to someone else. And during our chat Nadine said that she woke up in the middle of the night with a new idea, and is about to set up a candle subscription service which is not yet online, but do watch out for it soon.
Involved in a tech business, developing business simulation games to train staff in all types of companies about the need for team working, it is something of a first for Nadine to have an online presence all of her own. The steep learning curve has been conquered however and now Pentland Aromatics is beautifully presented online.
The luxury home fragrances are made at Nadine’s home base just south of Edinburgh, and all products are vegan friendly, cruelty-free and made in small batches. The one woman business means she is involved at every stage from devising the recipes to posting out the products. It is typical of a cottage industry that the founder has to learn to do everything themselves first, and Nadine said she has really enjoyed teaching herself everything beginning with soaps and moving on to soy candles.
Explaining that she had to become a business owing to pressure from friends who liked the samples. All sales in February will raise funds for Christian Aid in memory of Nadine’s neighbour Mike Clarke who died recently and who was a big supporter of her business idea, filling his house with lovely scents from Pentland’s candles.
Nadine said she had just helped to dig the postman out of the snow ahead of our call, and was waiting for another delivery later on. She said: “It has been a bit of a journey setting up this wee business and now I am busy packing parcels to send my candles out far and wide. I am anxiously awaiting the delivery of more wax today as I have already sold out of the Lime Basil and Mandarin candle and the Sea Salt and Driftwood candles. So when I get some more I will be back at my Bain Marie crafting more. It is really exciting how many people have found my website already, and it is a really nice hobby to have alongside my full time job with ROCKET.”
Room and linen sprays will be available soon and plug in diffusers will be next in line.
And to maintain her eco-friendly credentials if you return the bottles your product is provided in, then it will be used again.
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Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
