Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 7/19/2021
HOLYOKE – A pair of Holyoke residents are working to provide candle lovers more options with their very own candle line.
Jim Gagne said prior to owning the Nina Candle Company he owned a company that made teddy bears, but began phasing that out a few years ago. “We could have them made overseas cheaper than we could have them made here,” he said.
Gagne said he’d “dabbled with candles” previously. “So we started playing around with that,” he said. Gagne teamed up with one of the original founders of Yankee Candle, who “developed the jar candle.”
“I didn’t know he did it. We both lived on the same street. I didn’t know he had been involved before, but through a mutual friend of ours, we got together quite a few years ago, probably about eight years ago,” he said. “We worked on getting the product. We tested for about three years.”
Gagne said when the process of creating the candle company began, his granddaughter, who he named the company after, had not yet been born. “She just turned 17,” he said, laughing. “We did put a lot of time [in].” Gagne explained the candle cycle “goes down” every 10 years.
“It goes down low, comes back up and then goes back down. And when we were really ready to start the first time we were in [a] down, so we decided to wait,” he said. “Then we were ready to open here and get started last March, on March 9 we were ready to be here and on the 12th they closed everything down.” He said this pushed their opening date, and it wasn’t until August of 2020 that they once again prepared to open their doors and launch the candle line.
While they have a storefront next to Ocean State Job Lot on Northampton Street, he said they pour their candles via machine in Westfield due to zoning regulations. He said prior to pouring the candles, however, there was extensive testing done to ensure both the consistency of the wax and the fragrance were perfected.
“The wax we use is a blend of a blend. It’s a blended wax that we’ve added other ingredients to come up with the way we want to do,” he said. “It took us quite a while.”
The consistency of the wax, he explained, was imperative for ensuring that the candle didn’t tunnel and melted consistently and evenly all the way around. The wick, he said, also played a significant role in how the candle melted. “I teach everybody to keep their wick trimmed to a quarter of an inch, it eliminates most of the sooting problem,” he said. “It doesn’t look like much, but when it starts to get this little mushroom, blow it out and start again. It eliminates a lot of problems.”
He said a significant problem they had run into recently was a glass shortage. “We don’t know if we’re going to be able to get glass, my glass supplier told me that they can’t get us any of this size glass until after the first of the year,” he said. Gagne said due to being a small company they had not been in the queue for purchasing as a distributor, the only way he was able to access glass for the candle. Fortunately, he said he was able to order some pallets of the glassware needed.
He also discussed the “seconds” they always had on sale at half price. He said while transitioning between colors and fragrances there were some candles produced that didn’t have the correct color or scent due to the nature of production. Gagne said while these candles burn just like any other, they didn’t meet production standards and therefore couldn’t be sold at full price.
In one week, Gagne said they go from their lightest shade of chandler to the darkest, and then go back down in shades the following week. “Half the week goes up [in shades.] We try to do 20 fragrances a week, we have 40 fragrances,” he said.
In addition to offering classic glass jar candles, Gagne said they produce wax melts and smaller candles. The smaller candles, he explained, were a “harder wax.” The reason for this, he said, was due to how they were produced. “These you want to stick to the jar and these are made in a mold, so you have to make a harder wax and another one to shrink it so it comes out of the mold. Otherwise you can never get them out of the mold,” he said.
Another service offered by the candle company is personalized candle labels. “One of the things that we do, we can personalize any candle. You send us the picture and you can write on the bottom what you want,” he said. Gagne said that he had a customer whose mother had passed away and she had ordered candles with photos of her mother, the year she was born, the year she passed and her name to distribute at the memorial.
Other customers, he said, had used the customization to memorialize vacations or trips with their loved ones, family or friends. Additionally, he said they make a candle called 10 tiny toes that can be created in the colors white, pink or blue. He said the candle, that smells like baby powder, can be created to use as favors for gender reveals or baby showers.
Gagne said popular fragrances include pineapple, coastal mist, cappuccino hazelnut, English lavender, French vanilla and hydrangea. Nina Candle Co. offers three size of glass jar candles, wax, melts, daylight candles, and votive candles. Candles can be ordered online at https://www.ninacandle.com.