How we started selling candles

About six years ago, Bill and Vicki were on vacation somewhere in the western United States. Vicki stopped walking. She was looking at a couple of Swan Creek candles.

Anyone who knows Bill knows the rule. If something caught Vicki’s attention hard enough to stop her, she wants it. He buys it. Always.

Then he saw the price on those candles, and the wheels started turning. Anyone who knows him knows that can be dangerous.

They got home and he went online. Bill types with one finger. Slowly. He also believes the first thing he reads. So the research took a while. Months went by.

Then a giant package showed up. Not at a gift shop. At a fully running auto repair shop we have operated since 2012. This was around 2017. Inside the box: soy wax pellets, wicks, scents, jars — the whole nine yards.

Why? He had read that making candles is easy. If companies like Yankee and Swan Creek could do it, so could he.

So Bill started making candles. The rest of us are mechanics and tow truck drivers. We thought it was ridiculous. Nobody comes to an auto shop to buy a candle. Nobody would even think to look. Bill pressed on anyway. For a couple of years he made them, and he actually sold them.

Then Bill was off on one of his random escapades — that happened a lot — and he came across Swan Creek’s headquarters. Vicki liked Swan Creek. If he could buy from the manufacturer, he could save some money. Not a bad idea. Solid logic.

Swan Creek only sells that way if you are a reseller. So Bill did the next logical thing.

At the time he was driving a 2012 Ford Mustang. Small car. Not much room in the back. He signed up on the spot and bought a couple thousand dollars of inventory anyway.

His thinking went like this: sell two thousand dollars of candles and make the money back. If they do not sell, Vicki just got two thousand dollars of Swan Creek at the reseller price. Again, sound logic.

We laughed. We talked about renaming the garage Bill’s Candle Emporium. We made that joke for years.

He kept selling them. Not a couple. We have placed about twenty orders with Swan Creek over the last five years, and it has been picking up.

This site is the next step. A shop of our own — Stone River Retail Co. — so you do not have to walk into a bay looking for brake work and come out with a candle.