From Kitchen Side Hustle to Sephora: How Harlem Candle Co. Hit Millions Without Investors

0:00I feel like I have a responsibility to everyone in Harlem and everyone who came before me and laid this groundwork. And I'm not going to mess it up. I'm going to bring out the most beautiful, delicious fragrances that people can experience in their space. Welcome to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and scaling a business. I'm your host, Serena Smith. Scent has the power to transport you to a memory, a moment, even an entire era. Few brands capture that feeling more vividly than Harlem Candle Company, a luxury fragrance line dedicated to bringing the spirit and artistry of the Harlem Renaissance to life.

0:38Once I realized that people really wanted these products and there was demand, I need to be all in. Terry Johnson's candle-making passion became a full-fledged business in 2014, built on meticulous research, elegant design, and rich storytelling through scent. We started building a community very, very early because our customers became evangelists for us. The brand has since grown into a multi-million dollar company with national retail partners, major corporate clients, and ample press recognition, including the grand mecca of all things Oprah's favorite things. It has also expanded into fragrance with the award-winning Harlem Perfume Company.

1:12Here now to shed more light on her journey is Terri Johnson, founder of Harlem Candle Company and Harlem Perfume Company. Welcome to the show, Terri. Thank you. I love that intro. Oh my God. That was beautiful. Well, I can't take too much credit. I got to give some thanks to my producer, Alicia, for that one. But I mean, yeah, you have really traveled a journey. It is such a feat to start a company and have it survive the first year or the first five years. And now you're 11 years in, which I'm sure is like hard to even wrap your head around. But I want to go back to the beginning for a minute.

1:56You're a woman who has lived many lives. You were a management consultant at some point. You were a travel and lifestyle host and content creator. Take me back to that moment in 2013, 2014, when the idea was sparked to go into the candle business. Well, when I first started making candles, it was really to give gifts to friends and family. And this was a year where I had a show called Travelista, Travelista Terry, Travelista TV. But at that time, I wasn't really making money. And it was just such a hustle. So I knew that Christmas, I was going to see so many different friends, so many different family members that I wanted to give gifts.

2:43I wanted to give Christmas gifts. And I did not have the money to go shopping for everyone. And when I think about the gift that I love to receive, it's a candle. Anyone who gets me a beautiful luxury candle is just my favorite person. Because every single time I light that candle, I think of that person. It's just such a special gift. So I decided that I was going to make candles. And I had met a chemist who had created fragrance oils for different candle brands. So he gave me about five or six different fragrances. And I just learned how to make candles on YouTube. And I made a bunch of very handcrafted candles.

3:18I mean, if I look back at them, they're pretty ugly. And they just look like someone made them in their kitchen. Because someone did make them in their kitchen. Because exactly. I bought the glass on the internet. I figured out the wigs and I was even trying to color them. I mean, they looked pretty bad, but they smelled amazing. And what I did is every single one that I gifted, I customized based on the personality of who I was giving it to. If I know that you love beautiful flowers and that you love roses, okay, I'm going to make sure that the one that you get has the scent profile that I know that you're most attractive.

3:51to. And every single candle that I gifted, I had a little story to go with it. So I was just very encouraged by my friends and family to go into the candle business and just sell them at these artisan markets and these pop-ups. Because at that time, that was a big thing. Everyone was kind of figuring out, oh, I can make this, I can make that, and I can go and sell it. And at the time that I started it, I branded it La Maison des Bougies de Thierry, Terry's House of Candles, but it was just for fun. But I knew if I was actually going to go into business and sell candles that really had a story that people were going to resonate with, I needed to come up with something that was going to be catchy, that was going to be authentic, where people could feel connected to it.

4:34And I felt like, well, here I am making these candles in my Harlem kitchen. I'm listening to some jazz and I'm drinking some wine. And I'm, you know, why not call it the Harlem Candle Company and use the Harlem Renaissance as the inspiration for all the fragrances? So that's kind of how I got started. Your first market research was really powerful market research. And then it came directly from your friends and family saying, we love this. And it sounds like it was really homegrown. You were going step by step by step. Given that you had full-fledged other careers, was there a point at which you said to yourself, oh, I think this is like an all-in business and not just a side hustle?

5:15Yeah. When I was selling out at these pop-up markets, and now, mind you, these were the ones I was still making in my kitchen. They looked handcrafted, but I was selling out. And I think once I realized that people really wanted these products and there was demand, that's when I realized that if I'm going to do this, I need to be all in. I can't kind of dibble dabble. I need to be 100 % where I'm focused on this so I can grow the business, so I can work with the big perfume houses so I can afford to be able to purchase the best fragrance oils, so I can afford to be able to create beautiful packaging.

5:52And you don't just get a thousand, uh-uh. You have to get like, you know, 5 ,000, 10 ,000 of the same boxes if you're going to get a really good price on them. So I realized that I needed to be all in and I said, okay, let's do it. So what did that early stage financial investment look like on your end? I just reinvested everything I made right back into the business. So there was no like moment of, oh yeah, I'm going to, you know, dedicate$10 ,000. It was really little by little by little. And because I was on Shopify from pretty much day one, I was selling candles and cha-ching, you know, getting the money.

6:34And then that money was going into the account and then I could buy the things that I needed to buy. So, but just so you know, when I first started this business, my idea was to be a direct-to-consumer business because I understood the cost of goods of candles. You know, this packaging is expensive. I have spot gloss. I have a design on the inside of the body. There's so many little details, and I wanted to create something that was really beautiful, that was very luxurious. But I also know that that is expensive. I have so many different colors of glass. I have, you know, the most expensive part of the candle is actually the fragrance oil that's in the candle and in the wax.

7:10So I knew that in order to do it at a price point that was going to be attractive enough to people, I knew that I need to be majority direct to consumer. So my idea was that I'm going to figure out really beautiful visuals, really great storytelling, beautiful scents, and attract people online to the point where the customers love the products. They trust us. If we launch something new, they buy it. And that's what's happened. It's a particularly fascinating thing with candles because the primary reason, right, even if there are all these other secondary reasons why people are buying the candle, the primary reason is the scent.

7:48And you can't engage with the scent when you're looking at a candle online. So how did you bridge that gap for people and get customers to take that leap and buy one of your candles when they couldn't experience that scent component of it? Well, when I first started, I hired some of the best fragrance writers. So these are people who they write fragrance copy for all of the big brands, but they were totally open to writing fragrance copy for me. I can tell you, yep, this is the perfect scent, but I don't know how to necessarily describe it in words. It's going to be so evocative. It's going to be so compelling for people to be so excited to want to buy it and smell it.

8:29So I hired, you know, the best of the best and they would write it without even smelling the candle. but they understood okay the top the middle and the base notes they know which fragrance notes can evoke a certain mood and so they were just brilliant at it and so I've always had really good copywriting so that helped and then visuals I also hired I mean I remember sliding into her DM because she's doing all these beautiful pictures of her like diptyque and Lafco and Nest and all these huge brands and I just slid into her DM I was like you are unmatched if there is any way you would ever be willing to photograph my products, I would be so grateful.

9:09And she replied the next day, she's like, I've been looking at your stuff and it looks so beautiful. I would be honored. And we still work together to this day. And that's, it's been about 10 years. So. And who is that? Oh, her name is Nadine. Nadine Coy. Yeah. Nadine. Shout out to Nadine. Yeah. I actually work with two Nadines. There's another Nadine who's based in Canada and she's my graphic designer. She's incredible too. So I just love Nadine's. Nice. Yeah, it's incredible how often if you just have the gumption to reach out to someone directly, how willing they will be to help you, you know.

9:47Candles are a crowded market. I mean, I think I counted seven different candle brands in my home before we started this recording today. And yet Harlem Candle Company has this very specific soul. How did you create that differentiation in the marketplace for yourself? And how much of it felt really intentional versus just sort of a happy accident? Well, I love this question. So it has taken me quite a while to really kind of understand, how did I get here? Even when I look around my apartment, like, why do I like this design, art deco? Like, what has attracted me to this so much? So when I was in college, I studied abroad.

10:34I lived in Paris, and I studied at the Sorbonne and then ended up doing my internship. So I spent a year there. And while I was there, I was pretty much by myself. And, you know, I had some friends, but it wasn't like I was there with family or, like, best friends. I was just living. I had my own apartment. And I just became a student of Paris and like, what makes this place so interesting, so historic? And I would go to places and I would see huge, beautiful images of Josephine Baker on the wall. And what I realized is there is so much Black history and Black culture and music and literature where a lot of these people from the Harlem Renaissance from you know, a hundred years ago would go and spend a lot of time in Paris and in France and create all sorts of works.

11:26Josephine Baker, for instance, you know, there's a Place de Josephine Baker, you know, she has the highest military honors in France. There's so many really, really interesting things about her legacy and her history in France. Like she is an icon, like she is everything. And I think that's really where the seed got planted of me as an African-American woman living in France and understanding how much appreciation they have for Black American culture. The music, the artistry, the literature. James Baldwin, for instance, lived 17 years of his life in St. Paul de Vence and wrote some of his greatest work and lived his happiest moments there.

12:10You know, what is that? How can I capture that in a fragrance? I think it goes back to me realizing, hey, I'm living in Harlem. I have so much appreciation and respect for those who've come before me. And from a design perspective, I just love like timeless, classic elegance. And I wanted to figure out, well, how can I create products that people like? Basically, how can I create products that I want to buy? I want to buy a candle inspired by Josephine Baker's boudoir. And I know you would too, Serena. It's a very good setup. Thank you so much. Yes, we were talking right before we began recording that when I was 12 years old in Vancouver, BC, I did like a four-month-long project on Josephine Baker.

12:56I have been a Josephine Baker stan my entire life. I don't understand why everyone doesn't know about her. similarly with Langston Hughes or James Baldwin, right? You know, people think about telling these stories through documentary or through filmmaking. You're doing it through candles, which is really interesting. It's almost like wolf in sheep's clothing. The people come in for the candle, but then they're getting this like dose of history, right? That's enriching all of us. And in this universe, I don't know how much people know about the Harlem Renaissance anymore, you I mean, how key has that storytelling piece been when it comes to customer loyalty and retention?

13:34Has it kept people coming back? Yeah, I think it has because people appreciate what I'm doing. They think, wow, this is really, really cool. But I also feel like I have a responsibility. You know, because I was able to trademark the name Harlem Candle Company, I feel like I have a responsibility to everyone. in Harlem and everyone who came before me and who laid this groundwork and had to face all sorts of stuff a hundred years ago that I don't have to deal with today. And it's almost like they walked so I could run. And so because I have this responsibility, I'm not going to mess it up. I'm going to do the best I possibly can to really bring out the most beautiful, delicious fragrances that people can experience to have a little bit of that light and a little bit of that mood and a little bit of that ambiance in their space.

14:28I think there's something so important to be said about when a venture, a business, a project, whatever it is, is purpose-driven. It sort of aligns you to a North star for your whole journey. Have you felt like hearing you talk about feeling a sense of responsibility to the place where you live and to its history and to honoring these iconic characters. Like, has that helped guide you in your business journey to ensure that you're always sort of moving in the right direction? Absolutely. And in fact, I have black and white pictures of Langston Hughes right above my desk. I have Billie Holiday on the living room wall.

15:10I have Josephine Baker across the way. I have their images around me. It's almost like I kind of feel like they're my angels in a sense. And I do kind of feel like they are proud of me. I feel like they're like, go, go, Terry, keep going. It's weird, right? But I've created that energy in my space. And even when friends come over, they just love it because there's this presence of this energy and of love and respect that just exists here. The Harlem Kennel Company was born here. So, you know, there's that. I believe in that. Like, ooh, create the space, the energy. You're keeping their presence alive.

15:51You could probably have a pretty powerful seance in your house. I know. You don't know who's occupying those walls, you know? No, absolutely. Maybe I'm going to come over. We're going to channel Josephine. I would love that. You would love it here. It's special. No, but so one of the things that not too many people realize is that when I was building this business, I sacrificed a lot. And when I say I sacrificed a lot, there was a lot of trips that I didn't get to go on, like girl trips that I didn't do because I'm like, oh, you know, I really need to be focused. I need to reinvest into the business.

16:31I need to buy more glass. I need to buy more this. I need to buy more that. But another thing that I did is I would rent out my second bedroom to Airbnb guests. And I was doing that up until the pandemic. And my Airbnb guests would sometimes help me make candles because they were like here, you know, they didn't have friends. And so I became their friend. And they're like, I see you're so busy. Do you need help? Mm-hmm. Yep. Okay. This is what you do. This is what you do. And we would have so much fun. And so I made so many friends, but I also felt so much support, you know, because they weren't like, I can't believe I'm renting your second bedroom and you're in the kitchen making candles.

17:12They thought it was the coolest thing ever. They've helped me add pop-ups, create my AD design show space. I mean, they became friends of the early days of the Harlem Candle Company. So that's one thing I can definitely say. If you're thinking about starting a business or a brand and you need to figure out where you're going to get another source of income, I mean, at the time, Airbnb was it for me. I didn't have to worry about my mortgage because it was covered. All I had to worry about was just selling candles and putting the money back in the business so I could make more and sell more. I mean, that was you building community on such a one-to-one grassroots level.

17:51But that stuff can radiate outward, right? Then you've got these people that are going to go out into the world and they're going to talk about you and they've got this really cool story about making candles in your home with you. Do you have any other advice for aspiring or early stage founders about that community building piece? Yeah. You know, there's a lot, especially with social media. There's so much we could do with community. But when you find those people who are your early adopters, when they just are buying those people who you don't know, and they're going on your website, purchasing whatever your product is, and you know that they're not your cousin or your friend or they went to school with you.

18:30They are just a random person. The early ones, I will never forget because I would just kind of scan the names in Shopify. I'm like, who is that? And then I'd look them up. Oh, okay. And then I'm like, wow. And then sometimes you see the address. You're like, ooh, that's a nice house. Okay. So making sure that you send a really, really nice note. In the beginning, I had the bandwidth to be able to do that. But now it's just figuring out ways to automate really nice ways to say, thank you for trusting us as a business because you've just given me your money. You don't know what that candle is going to smell like.

19:05So we started building a community very, very early because our customers became evangelists for us. And they were the ones telling their friends and gifting their friends. And it feels like we definitely have a community, even just me doing Instagram lives. I used to do that during the pandemic. I did them like almost once a week. It was a lot. But I was just doing Instagram lives where I'm connecting with our customers, connecting with, you know, the friends of the Harlem Candle Company. And it was super, super cool. And I would not have the Harlem Perfume Company if it wasn't for our customers telling us what they wanted and me listening.

19:42And they had been asking us to make perfume for a really, really long time because the candles that we have, they're made by fine fragrance perfumers, by master perfumers. So us being able to create a fine fragrance, it's like, it's almost sometimes can be a little, I'm not going to say easier, but that's the way they think. And they're just taking the fine fragrance ideas and turning it into something that can be an ambient scent. So our customers kept asking and, you know, it was the pandemic. I had time. I said, okay, let's see what this could be. And now we have eight perfumes. We've just launched with Sephora.com.

20:23Congratulations. Thank you. And we've already won a few awards. Yes. Yes. You just won a big award from Harper's Bazaar, right? Yeah. Yep. And Oprah Daily. And we were a finalist for the Perfume Extraordinaire Award for our Josephine perfume. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. You were talking about going from this moment where, you know, you're handwriting, looking up people's houses online. I do the same thing. I'm with you. You're writing a nice handwritten note to you getting to a moment of growth in the company where that's just not feasible anymore. Have there been any processes or tools that have been really instrumental to you being able to scale?

21:05Oh, goodness. Absolutely. I mean, with email marketing, that is just amazing to be able to create segments and customer groups of who are your VIPs? Who are those people who open up every email and add stuff to cart and checkout almost all the time? So understanding when you launch a new product, this customer is going to buy and being able to give them early access to certain things because they are so loyal to be able to make them feel more special that they're not just anybody. They've been with me since 2016. For me to even acknowledge that and be able to put stuff like that in the language and our email flows is super cool because they're like, oh, she knows me, you know, but it's the data.

21:51The data knows you. And yes, so do I. I have to say also, like you started making candles in your kitchen. And I think a lot of us have had, you know, some kind of DIY craft workshop at some point or another where, you know, we poured wax into a vessel. It doesn't sound so complicated, but as I was doing the research, I'm like, it's way more technical than it seems, you know, like these elements of scent throw, which is like the extent to which the scent will like permeate a space and clean burning and you know, the issues of soot. It's a lot more than just wax in a vessel. What were some of the expensive or challenging lessons that you've learned the hard way about formulation or manufacturing or sourcing?

22:40I've learned a lot of lessons. I would say, okay, so the very first time I went to print on these boxes, it has spot gloss. It has the Harlem H going all around it. If you look on the inside of the box, it has a really cool print of the nightclub map of Harlem, which was artwork done in 1932 by illustrator E. Sims Campbell with all of the nightclubs and the speakeasies in Harlem at the time. It has a little ode to Harlem, a little special message, and it has the label, which is already printed on the box. So the very first time I went to print on boxes, they were so expensive. They cost almost like$6.31.

23:23That's how much each box, just the box,$6.31. And what were you anticipating going in? What was your best guess? Well, I didn't really know what to expect, but I also knew I don't want to be on the hook for 10 ,000 boxes. What if the business doesn't do it? I needed to prove it to myself that I can sell 1 ,000 candles. So I paid$6.31 per box. And so at the end of the day, the cost of goods for this handle was probably like$15. It was ridiculous. Not even including my labor. But back then I wasn't paying myself. It was really just about creating products, creating a story, creating everything that's going to resonate.

24:10And then I can scale and grow. So if I had to do it again, I should have just bet on myself that, okay, I can do more than 1000 boxes. Maybe it would take me a couple of years to get through it. I still would have gotten through it, but I would have gotten my cost of goods down. You lose money when you don't think long-term, but also just kind of trying to be a little bit more safe. So always know what your cost of goods are and what is the maximum that they ever should be. And then I could have skimped on certain things, but I'm glad I never did. Because even if you go and look at our boxes from 10 years ago until today, they're beautiful.

24:54And people have always talked about them. And if you're gifting something, no matter how good that candle smells and how long it burns and how beautiful it looks in your home, people need to be excited when they take it out of that box. And I think our packaging really does that. I agree. I mean, I think the consideration of all those sort of secondary touch points can contribute in such a huge way to someone's experience of that product and whether or not they're going to come back. And with Harlem Candle Company, it's just this incredible attention to detail, right? There are all these moments that bring you into the experience of the candle before you even light the thing, right?

25:32It sounds like you've retained a lot of that despite the fact that it adds expense. Have there been any of those added bells and whistles over the course of the last 11 years that you've realize weren't really moving the needle and you could kind of do away with? Superfluous. Yes. So we decided that we wanted to put 22 karat gold on candle glass. Why you ask? Because it's so pretty and it's so fancy, but this candle glass was so expensive when it was all said and done, but we wanted something that was going to be extra special. And we knew that we had the customers who would be willing to pay, but they just move a lot slower.

26:09And so the longer you are sitting with a product like this in inventory at our warehouse. You're paying bin fees every month. You're paying storage fees. So I don't know if we would do actual 22 karat gold on a glass that hopefully people keep, but a lot of people might just throw it in the trash and this is like real gold. And for our listeners, just to give them a sense, there's like this beautiful gold etched pattern on this vessel. I mean, I would think you would be a fool to throw that out after it's done. Yeah. Yes. I think it's foolish too. We now know in retrospect that the pandemic was like a huge boom time for candle sales.

26:52Everybody is just in their home trying to experience some kind of little luxury and aliveness. How quickly when we were moving into the pandemic, did you see the writing on the wall? And what did you do as a company to prepare for that? Oh, right away. I knew we were going to be here for a long time. We would get so many customer service messages of them saying, thank you. Just thank you for making this candle because this is making me so calm right now. And we would see our customers shipping candles to their friends in different places. So I realized this is a movement because everyone is just trying to say, I love you, I support you, or I'm here for you, but we can't see each other because we weren't traveling.