On the banks of the mighty Mississippi, off the bustling main street of Helena, Arkansas, sits the home of WAX Candle Company. Deep in the summer of 2011 trying to escape the delta heat for a short break, we found ourselves in picturesque Maggie Valley, North Carolina. The nights were chilly high in the Smokies, unlike the steamy nights along the Mississippi back home. We spent several nights around a campfire tossing around ideas. One of those smoky evenings the thought of making candles that smelled like your favorite surroundings sparked a little something in the back of our minds. We talked of rugged scents that you wouldn’t expect – scents that would speak for themselves. Had we really just tossed the idea of a candle company out there? One of us a bartender for years in the Big Easy and the other a delta cotton farmer…a candle company? The following year in 2012, the first candle was poured.
Determined to set ourselves apart from everyone else, we toiled and tested for a year before our first offerings were ready. We wanted simple packaging with no flashy absurd labeling. Our container would be the most iconic of all Americana – the classic, square, mason jar with a hand-stamped, galvanized metal lid to adorn the top. By fall, we were ready to sell our first candle. Throughout the next year we continued to grow and began to wholesale to stores.
January of 2014 we found ourselves around another one of those campfires and the phrase “Trim your Wicks, not your Whiskers!” popped into my mind. For the last two years we had told everyone we encountered about our new candle company and no matter if they burned our candles or other candles, to please remember and trim the wick before they light them! This trim your wicks, trim your wicks, trim your wicks mantra had been bouncing around in my head and as I stroked my beard in that firelight the two collided. It has since been emblazoned on everything we do and is our company slogan. We hope it spreads the word about trimming wicks before lighting candles, but if it encourages you or someone you know to grow a beard, that’s pretty righteous, too!