Little Red Candle Co’s Sam Bowles on the ups and downs of 2020

While her candle business hasn’t been completely unaffected by coronavirus, there is one important reason why Bridgewater’s Sam Bowles says it’s not been all bad news.

Food and fragrance: Bridgewater’s Sam Bowles from Little Red Candle Co.

SAM Bowles laughs as she explains that a lot of her early candle scents were food-related.

Given she had been training and working as a chef since she was a teen, “obviously everything in my life was to do with food at the time”.

Now, the 24-year-old’s business, Little Red Candle Co., which recently celebrated its third anniversary, has a wide ranges of products and scents, which she is selling online while coronavirus restrictions are in place.

Sam — who moved from Bendigo to Bridgewater three years ago — first turned her hand to candlemaking about four years ago, spurred on by a lack of hobbies compared with her now-fiance. She now makes candles, reed diffusers, soy melts and room sprays.

Like many businesses, COVID-19 has had an impact on Sam. She started the year with plans to downsize her work commitments as a chef to spend more time at markets and building her own business.

But coronavirus not only put paid to that idea, it also meant she spent weeks at home as the pub she worked at was forced to close.

For the past few months she has been working at Bendigo Wholefoods. As for Little Red Candle Co., she says it has not been all bad news, which she puts down to one, simple reason.

“If anything, I think it [demand] has actually increased a bit because, well, everyone is at home so everyone has the time to burn a candle,” she said.

“I’m wondering how it will continue on post-COVID.”

Sam says she sources soy wax from the US, and says sustainability is the main reason for that.

“I was able to do a meet-the-farmer and I know it’s sustainably grown and non-GMO and I was able to make sure it wasn’t part of the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest,” she says.

Pre-virus, Sam says she would make four or five batches of candles, with about 10 candles a batch. Now, she is making about the same volume of candles, 40-50 each week, but they are made to order. Her candles are stocked at the Bridgewater post office and nursery, as well as a few stockists in Melbourne and across the border in NSW.

Little Red Candle Co. is also one local producer whose goods are sold at the Loddon Shed, an online shop launched earlier this month to showcase Loddon Shire food producers, growers and small business. Others whose products are on the site include Fernihurst’s Red Dog Chillies, Yaruga Plains wool, Bridgewater Berets, Boort’s Salute Oliva and Squirrel Gully Saffron.

“I have seen an increase in demand from our local region because everyone in the Loddon Shire has heard about the Loddon Shed and they’re all going and sussing out what is actually there and realising there are all these people in their backyard that they didn’t know about,” Sam says.

“It’s been actually wonderful to see how much has been put into showcasing local communities.”

MORE

YOUNG FARMERS CONNECT BRANCHING INTO VICTORIA

GREG KEYNES RELEASES MEMOIR THE FLYING BUSHMAN

PORK FILLET WITH MUSCAT WINE AND CRANBERRIES