For my entrepreneurship class, we were tasked with creating a business. My friend Emily and I decided to team up and make candles to sell (hence, the name Em&Em). This was such a fun project, and we made some money! I also got to learn about candlemaking, marketing, branding, and getting things printed – the latter was actually really hard. We first conducted a survey asking people what sort of things they were looking for when they bought candles. I knew that I wanted something that was as sustainable as possible, so soy wax and upcycled packaging. Math wiz Emily made it all possible with her budgeting and financial planning. I’m pretty sure she’s off studying business or something now, a very fitting path and I wish her all the best!
#1 The Poll Stats
#2 Starting to advertise on social media (here are some of the social media posts I made)
#3 Developing Product and Packaging + Social Media Announcements on Fragrances
The front & back of our business cards are listed below. I had to figure out how to make a clear background so that the ink would show up on the recycled kraft paper stock we used for the cards.
#4 Making Candles!
We had to break wine and beer bottles to make the candle jars. Here are some I made myself. Do not recommend it, especially done barefoot (I got a piece of glass lodged in my foot). Also, some of the bottles just exploded and did not break on the score lines we made? It was a cool upcycle project but we really did not have enough expertise to sand these properly so a lot of them had dull, however wavy edges.
#5 More promo material with the candles (the stickers came in late).
I had ordered Em&Em stickers and business cards but they were taking a while to come in. So in the meantime, I did some product advertisements without stickers. These are just pictures taken around my room.
#6 Video Promo and Wrapping
A promo video we made for the school to watch in classes and to post online. Thanks to our actress, Sophie, and the testimonials from the other Sophie, Megan, and Nathaniel. Beautiful editing is done by my co-founder, Emily, of course.
One of the boxes of wrapped candles is ready for sale!
#7 Sale days!
All fifty of our candles sold in three days. Because of COVID, we went to school every other day. However, so that the other group could also have access to the sale, we went to lunch break on the day we were supposed to stay home. The sale was one of the best parts in my opinion, everyone was so nice!
Here are some social media posts I made letting people know where we were selling and how much stock we had left every day:
This was one of the largest projects I’ve undertaken during my time at ESA. It was such a rewarding and fun experience even though I did suffer some glass injuries and headaches from concentrated fragrance lol.