When your kids have gone out into the world and you’re looking at more spare time in your day, it makes sense that you might explore some creative outlets that keep your mind sharp and your hands busy.
Heather, the Owner and Maker at Room Candy Candles, is leaning all the way into her empty nest - she’s corporate by day and candle maker by night! A few years back, Heather deep-dove into her passion and started her candle business; doing a lot of research and testing, mastering even the minor details, and quickly becoming successful with friends, family, and their extended circles - all just in her spare time.
As past-life contact, Heather had my name in the back of her mind, and she came to me because she felt she was ready to level up, taking the next step in growing her business. She had built a basic website, but wasn’t in love with it. In her mind, her product was “right,” but everything else needed a little help. In our initial Idea-to-Execution consult, Heather shared details about her marketing efforts, where she wanted to see her business in a few years, what was working, what wasn’t, and the inspiration behind her brand. What started as a website project grew into a strategy, website, and logo project.
Building a Strategy
The best place to start is always the beginning. Before we started working on any of the visual assets, I put together a comprehensive marketing plan for Heather that included foundational initiatives, and short-term and long-term goals. Within the plan, I included notes about anticipated costs, how to expand on each idea, and what kind of timeline she could expect for results. I looked at competitors in her area, and gave her some ideas for new categories and product lines that she could pursue when she was ready.
From this strategy, Heather is and will be ready to go when she has the time and energy to tackle something new in the business. It also helped her to identify what she wanted to tackle together - which primarily focused (and validated her feelings) on the logo and website.
Refreshing the Logo
Heather’s original logo was black, which, while unconventional - especially for a boutique candle maker - we learned she really liked. (In other words, we went through the trial-and-error of color palettes and she didn’t care for them!) The black logo worked because it was clean, and she was able to balance it well on the different backgrounds and vessels she was using. Even though it wasn’t originally on her list of to-do’s, I asked to take a stab at refreshing the brand.
Where we landed was a logo upgrade that kept the clean black look, still incorporated a lollipop, and that had a fun, organic, hand-drawn look. We created a little separation between the lollipop icon and the words, bringing in a super fun, curvy font that she loved. The final product was simply elevated and felt more professional and intentional.
While redoing the logo, I also created a simplified, smaller, alternate version of the logo mark that could be used easily in small spaces. This was made with the same font in the logo and uses the RC (for Room Candy).
Fine Tuning the Brand
An integral part of Heather’s brand is an animated character named Candy. Candy is an illustration that Heather’s daughter drew, based on a statue that Heather saw and fell in love with. This was Room Candy’s mascot, and we gave her a bit of an upgrade too. The original drawing had a lot of detail and texture in it, but some of the perspective was off, and it did not have the same illustrative style that the rest of the brand was leaning toward. I went in and simplified her quite a bit. I removed some of the extra items and texture in her hair, simplified the details in the plate, and removed the extra colors that were not incorporated in the rest of the website in order to use the same color palette. Essentially, I made her more flat, but more intentional. There was nothing wrong with her original image, we just made it more cohesive with the rest of the website.
During the process of working on the brand, I took the liberty of creating a hand-drawn repeating pattern for Heather as a surprise. Since we had talked about how she ships her candles (and she had graciously sent me some happy mail in the form of candles and samples), I had the idea to create this fun piece for her to use as personalized packing tape. When I showed it to Heather, she loved it! We ended up leveraging it as a background in her website as well, and now she has a custom asset unique to her and her branding.
To wrap up the things she needed in her suite of branded assets, we also worked on business cards and a notecard, and we turned Candy into a sticker! Now, she has all the assets she needs to be successful, to recognize and thank her clients, and to connect with new clients.
A Website Overhaul
On our Idea-to-Execution call, Heather and I did a review of her website, which was built on Wix with a robust shopping cart system. I talked with her to better understand her goals for the site, which focused on making it more visually appealing and easy for her customers to browse, shop, and be excited to come back. From there, I was able to get to work, building the site in a preview environment so that the existing site didn’t go down in the meantime.
The original website had 2 live pages – a home page and a shop page. There wasn’t a lot of consistency in the branding, and we found it difficult to navigate.
The first thing I did was revamp the homepage. I photographed one of the candles she sent me on a shelf in my office and leveraged AI to create a luxurious background environment for a welcoming photo that set the tone for the website experience. The rest of the homepage was expanded to include sections inviting users to explore the rest of the site, and the branding on the site was made more consistent with lots of sweet-like-candy, fun colors from the palette we agreed upon and that had been used in the new mascot drawing.
Some of the things we tackled on the site included:
Consistent iconography and color palette.
Expanded content laid out in an easy-to-peruse fashion. Not only is this good for the users visiting, but it’s good for search engines to help people find her site.
Bringing in her tagline, “Indulge Guilt Free” in appropriate places throughout the site - including as a link to shop.
A thoughtful, intentional shopping experience, with the ability to browse by scent, by room, or just in general. We also included information about how local customers could contact Heather and have an in-person shopping experience.
Providing information that “humanized” the brand - including an about the creator section.
Anticipating questions from users and creating a resources section that talked about sustainability, FAQs, and the ingredients in Room Candy Candles.
One of the most impactful parts of this website overhaul was really thinking through the experience for her shoppers. Heather had the candles on the site, but it was easier for me - who had an outside perspective - to see the holes and figure out the best way to jump from section-to-section, scent-to-scent. Heather supplied an enormous profile for each of her key scents, and now the listing for each is robust, has beautiful imagery, and answers all the questions shoppers might ask in one place.
Heather walked away with a brand that she is obsessed with (which is always my goal!). She’s now proud of her website, and excited to share with her friends and clients to grow her candle business. Heather’s been updating her social media regularly as she and her husband take Room Candy across the nation (her husband is a pilot!), and she’s been participating in local craft and artisan events with massive success.
Heather’s passion for creating something beautiful, functional, and hand-crafted is wonderful. I loved partnering with her on this fun, quirky brand, am proud of what we came up with, and can’t wait to see her business boom!
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