I’m excited and proud to introduce to you Pacifica Grace Studio today!
About a month after I resigned from my full-time corporate finance job, I got the idea to launch my own business selling handmade pure soy wax candles and wax melts. I've been working more than full time since early October to launch my business on November 15th. I’ve worked hard on product testing, product development, graphics, branding, web domain, all the financials, business plans, getting the appropriate licenses, social media, marketing, writing product copy, actually making the candles & wax melts, designing product labels, product styling & photography, shipping, customer service, etc. I'm doing everything myself and it's a one-woman show! :)
What’s in a name?
I named my business Pacifica Grace Studio because this combination of words hold deep meaning for me. Grace is my mom's name. I lost her to cancer in 2007 and my life hasn’t been the same since. It's my way of remembering and honoring her. Also, the meaning of my Chinese name is grace. It's actually two characters that mean "grace & mercy" together. Pacifica is derived from the Latin root for the word "peace". Plus I live near the Pacific Ocean, so it evokes that as well. Both words have individual meaning to me, but together they mean "grace & peace", which is how the apostle Paul greeted the Corinthians in I Corinthians. I’ve always loved that greeting. Plus, who couldn’t use more grace and peace in their everyday lives?
For the store launch I am offering nine scents initially for the holiday season. The are available in 3 sizes in candles and also in wax melts.
And star shaped wax melts of all nine scents. They are so cute and fills up a room with flameless scent really fast.
I also have a special limited edition blue-lid jar of our signature scent Grace. I’m donating all profits after cost of sales of this product to the American Cancer Society. Once this sells out it will not be restocked.
I don’t have room to carry a lot of inventory, so the candles and wax melts are made to order when a customer orders it. Soy wax does have a 24-48 hour cure time, so total production time is between 3-5 days before shipping out. After doing a ton of research on shipping, I’ve decided to ship USPS Priority Mail, which includes tracking numbers and some insurance. This ensures my customers receive their products in 2-3 days transit time. This also gives my business some shipping cost predictability. For the launch I am only shipping to the United States right now. I just don’t have the capacity yet to fill out the necessary customs forms and figure out shipping costs to other countries right now. But it’s always a possibility in the future.
I know some of you have been LONG time blog readers and have followed my little ol blog for many years! I’m incredibly grateful for you, especially since I haven’t been blogging as regularly in the last few years. I’m glad that you’re still here and still reading. I’m offering a special discount code for my blog readers. Please enjoy 10% off your total purchase through 12/15/2018 with the code BLOG10 in my store. (Click on the link and it will automatically apply the discount for you!)
I won’t always just be talking about my business here on the blog, because I have plans for new blog posts and content that I’ll share in a future post. But I will be sharing some behind the scenes of running the business, because that’s obviously a big part of my life now.
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Thanks so much for reading and sharing in my excitement for the launch of Pacifica Grace Studio!
