Good Candles Press Release

Well this is what happens when you have an unhealthy obsessions with candles, 6 months stuck at home during COVID, a love of Pat Butcher and try to make your daughter proud of you.

The UK candle industry is worth nearly £2bn a year* and at that scale it has the opportunity to do something really good and useful and that is why I created Good Candles.

Every candle sold = 10% of the sale donated to a good causes.

Put simply, if in 3 years we had just 0.1% of market share we would be donating £200,000 per year.

When we were kids candles were happy things. They were for birthdays and Christmas and celebrations, I’m not sure why we suddenly grew up and made them all serious and moody. We want to be silly, be happy and make some good things happen at the same time. I came up with the idea at Christmas in 2019 and spent a lot of 'lockdown' making it happen. I wanted something good to come out of this period of time.

I’m Olly, I have worked in retail since I was 13 and I love it. I enjoyed 16 years with Primark building and leading their digital communications team and have since focused on the growth of exciting UK brands such as Haeckels and I now proudly sit in the role of CMO at mahabis. I’ve been really lucky.

When I left my old job I promised myself I would give one day a week to good causes, to make a difference and give back. You see, I didn’t grow up with much and to be honest I had a great job at a very young age and I felt it was my responsibility to do something worthwhile to make my daughter proud and encourage others that anything is possible.

In 2019 I helped co-found Ecologi.com where we help offset your carbon footprint for less than £5 per month and have planted 3 million trees since launching in the summer of 2019. I’ve also become a mentor for FashMash and have supported several local business on a pro-bono basis. Yep, I am doing a lot but I think I owe it to people to do this whilst I can.

However, I think I can make more impact by also starting something new, something exciting and something that I don’t think exists. Think Toms for Candles but happier / sillier and they smell better.

The aim of the business is to donate meaningful amounts of each sale to fund change and specifically second chances. This year has been dreadful for so many and I think that newness and a fresh approach can motivate people. Going back to craft, to making things that matter and focusing on making those things beautiful

Setting fire to a candle that costs north of £30 is a very glamorous thing to do, so why not do it knowing that the profits are going towards causes such as The Trussell Trust, National Literacy Trust, Ecologi and CALM.

Every single cause has been chosen because it is close to my heart. I have lost 5 friends to suicide for example, which is why CALM was something incredibly close to my heart and we named that candle after my great grandad, Fred.

If you buy a candle from us we’ll donate 10% of that sale to a good cause. We’ll be clear, honest and transparent. No smoke and mirrors and we’ll share those donations monthly with our audience, the number of brands that promise donations and don’t actually deliver the goods is frankly shameful. The only exception is our Forest Fire candle where instead of donating we are planting 20 trees in our very own forest right here https://ecologi.com/goodcandles

We’re kicking off with four candles (leave the dad jokes out lads). I wanted to do more but I couldn’t afford to as I didn’t want to compromise on quality. We’ll be adding four more in early 2021 which will target homelessness, beach cleaning and support for those who have experienced miscarriage.

We’re tackling tricky subjects that aren’t being talked about enough. We want to provoke conversations. Our donations will of course be meaningful but they won’t stretch into the millions (yet). However, every candle will provoke a conversation (hopefully many) and that is where change can really be made.

The design of the packaging was carried out during lockdown with Melanie Johnsson all via phone and email, we only got to meet once the packaging had gone off to print!

If we help one kid learn to read, save one tree, stop one suicide or feed one person lunch it will have been worth it.