Candle Cocoon® LLC, candle supply company, is a family operation of a husband and wife team, two sweet little girls (not so little any more) and a staff that love serving our customers as much as we do! (In fact, it is often difficult to get Grace off the phone or Janna out the door when they are talking about candle making supplies!)
Candle Cocoon developed because of my own personal passion for anything fire related. Ever since I was a little girl I was often caught with my fingers in hot melted wax at restaurants! I remember my mother joking that maybe some day I would be a candle maker! I have been creating candles since 1993. Back then there was little technical help or information. Everything was trial and error, which was fine with me since I really like playing with fire. I started as a pillar maker. I loved the art of the shapes, the beauty of the colors and the feel of the wax. When I decided to sell my candles professionally in 1997 I came to realize that scent was a huge part of candles sales. Fragrances that were available were nothing special. I looked into having my own scents made and learned a lot. Most fragrance houses tried to give me stock scents. You know the ones. The fragrances you can get almost anywhere; flat, mono noted and often weak. I insisted time and time again that I wanted the best possible scents available and would settle for nothing less. I dealt with a lot of companies that didn't think that I understood the fragrance market because "nobody would pay more then $6.00 a pound for wholesale." Which would translate into about $15.00 per pound retail. Manufacturers felt that oils needed to be cut, not full strength, or candle makers wouldn't purchase them. It would be too expensive. Finally I found a few scent manufacturers who didn't think that I was crazy and have worked with me since then. If I was going to have scent in my candles they had to be the best scents possible! And that means testing for as much as four years to perfect each scent! I now have more than a dozen scent manufacturers in my arsenal from which to draw. Over the years we have developed an incredible relationship. They respect that our interactions will take time. From the start I needed my scents to be the healthiest possible. My scents were Phthalate FREE with no extra solvents from the beginning. And since our candle making (and now soap and lotion scents) are so concentrated that also means that they burn the best. The less stuff you put in a candle the less soot you get. Period. Which means a better quality candle. I also needed my candles to burn the best and not just smell the best! I learned that the more "junk" (additives. scent, dyes, etc) that are used in a candle the more soot that is produced. And since soot is not healthy for lungs or walls we needed to eliminate as much as possible. This was yet another reason to have the most concentrated and best possible scents available. Candle Cocoon concentrated on its candle fragrance line first, this has opened the doors to a new and different candle supply company...the high-end scent market! As my testing for scents increased I became more and more of a scent junkie. My passion for creating scents has now overtaken my zeal for candle making! And that is why I decided to start this candle supply company. I wanted to share these scents that I have worked so hard on with the rest of the world. I also want to share the knowledge that I have learned on how to make an incredible candle.
Since I have a background in natural sciences/chemistry I approach the field a bit differently. I believe in scientific testing and reproducible results. I am still learning through testing and talking to experts (and then re-testing.) I try to pass information on to my customers. I take a solid interest in the candle industry and need to offer something completely different than the current candle making suppliers. I feel I have achieved that with my unique fragrance line and well researched products.
Scent isn't the only aspect of a great burning, well-balanced candle. With the ability to use much less fragrance oil than the average supplier offered, candle makers can increase their profit margin and offer a cleaner burning candle. Candle Cocoon® grew to offer more candle making supplies as each passing test proved to our standards. We have now created a dye line that offers variety, ease and intensity to candle makers! Flutter Dyes are an fun candle dye that leaves no residue, doesn't clog wicks AND a portion of the profits goes to support endangered butterfly habitat. We are currently revamping our entire line to keep up with the color trends of the current market. Check out our new "Brimstone" yellow. It is just beautiful. Or our "Spicebush" black. Such a beautiful and true black!
In addition to candle making supplies we have just added soap and bath and body products! We are all very excited about learning new information. The soap field is just HUGE so please be patient with us as we learn. We have just added all of the IFRAs in our library so that you can see the maximum allowed for all of your favorite fragrances. We are also working on adding products that you would like. Just let us know what you need!
At Candle Cocoon® we take the environment seriously. We feel a personal responsibility to be stewards of the Earth. (After all, Aldo Leopold is my personal hero AND I live just a few blocks away from his former home!) Everything from re-using shipping boxes to using half sheets of paper for invoices. Don't even THINK that we would purchase packing peanuts! If you get them in your box you had better believe it is because we are reusing them. I did need to purchase packing peanuts once but they were the starch ones. Now, when we run low on peanuts we use our handy dandy list serve or Craig's List to ask for ones that may otherwise get land-filled. We even worked with the city to recycle our steel drums! We are also looking into organic alternatives for waxes and oils. Everything that we do has ramifications to the environment and we take that into account with our every action.
We have even developed and dedicated our line of candle making dyes around butterflies. Flutter Dyes™ from Candle Cocoon® will have a portion of their profits donated to endangered butterfly habitat. I can't even begin to tell you how excited we are about this new line and what we hope to achieve because of the sales of dye! These candle making dyes are as natural as possible. The dye portion is synthetic but the base is all natural. Unfortunately, there are no natural dyes that stand up in candles. You can use things like beet power or turmeric but the colors fade very quickly when exposed to any sorts of sunlight. On the other hand these natural dyes are WONDERFUL in soaps which tend to get used quickly.
And we can't forget about our packing! When we need to shrink wrap product we are incredibly happy to have found a 100% plant based bio-degradable plastic! And if you can ever make it into our store we have worked to make it as eco friendly as possible. Dual flush toilets, all LED lights, keeping our thermometer set low and recycling EVERYTHING we can get our hands on.
Candle Cocoon would not be complete without our friends working on the front lines on the phone and candle making forum and in the trenches processing orders, packing shipments and making Flutter Dyes. We want to welcome Grace as our new voice on the phones and Terri as our new voice in the forum. Grace came to us with very little actual candle making knowledge but boy has she been a quick study! She has been into a lot of different arts and crafts so it certainly didn't surprise me that she is able to pick up candle making so quickly! Terri has been a friend on the candle making forums for years! She has helped out on "The Candle Maker's Companion" Board for a long time now. In the future we hope to expand our lines even more and we hope that you will be there with us. If there is anything that we can do for you please don’t hesitate to let us know. Janna, our manager, joined us in 2015. She has over 40 years in retail and works to keep me focused. Not an easy job. Squirrel.....Anyway. People often think we are sisters or related. I used to think it was because perhaps we look alike. But now I think it is just because we never have a complete dialog as we often finish each others sentences. I just love this person! Valerie is our newest addition in our store front. Candle making is really getting to be an art form for her! Her "painted" candles are turning out incredible beautiful. Plus, she is just a nice nice nice person :)
Thank you for reading about our company! I am so thankful to everyone that has made us a part of their candle making journey! We hope that we can continue for many many many years to come!
Sincerely, Lyschel Bersch Owner-Candle Cocoon ®, llc
Candle Cocoon LLC
