Episode 7: Kate De Palma from Scented Designs with BestViewsReviews

Sanya : Hi everyone welcome to the Product LIfe, I, Sanya Arora, am your host for the day. This show is entirely about products, from home and electronics to skincare and beauty you will find everything. BestViewsReviews is a platform an exclusive selection of products with honest customer reviews. So I have with me our guest of the day, Kate De Palma, she’s the founder and CEO of Scented Designs, a brand of scented candles run by women. So Kate I would now like you to tell more about your brand to our followers.

Kate : Thanks Sanya. Hi everyone, I’m Kate De Palma and I do run Scented Designs candle company. We are a candle company based in San Jose, California and all of our products are made right here in our studio in San Jose. Our products are clean crafted soy candles so they burn clean, long, and strong. So when you bring them at home or when you give them as gifts you know that you’re not burning any unnecessary chemicals and toxins.

Sanya : Okay so that’s quite interesting, as we all know that scented candles these days are becoming very popular but their prices are also quite high so could you like give us some tips on how to choose the perfect candle at the right price.

Kate : Absolutely, it mainly comes down to the ingredients and the main ingredients of course is the candle wax and right now looking for a plant based wax such as soy or coconut wax is really what’s gonna give you the best cleanest burning candle and the longest burning as well. Soy wax for example would burn 50% longer than paraffin wax at the same size candle. So if it’s a smaller candle but a soy candle you can look for the burn time to see and that’s one way to see if the higher price tag would be worth it. You can also look at the wording on the label such as soy wax blend or soy blend, you only need 51% of the candle to be soy in order to be called a blend or half the blend covered in soy wax on the label but this could mean a lot of the wax could the be paraffin which is generally cheaper for manufacturer’s to source and it does releases toxins in the air that will cause potential health problems to people who are insensitive to chemicals in the air. So looking for ingredients like the wax, even the fragrances, there are some really synthetic fragrances out there that can cause headaches and trigger allergies. Cheaper candles tend to use lesser quality oils in creating the scent so you’re not getting a strong burning candle. So a higher price tag for a candle could mean a stronger scent, a longer lasting scent, less of chemicals in it. A higher price tag can also mean maybe you’re just paying for the name brand or a designer fragrance so you don’t necessarily need to spend so much as there are some really high quality ones such as Scented Designs that you can get for under $20 and it’s still going to be a high quality clean burning candle.

Sanya : Okay so that was quite helpful, So my next question would be like I know your products-candles are very much committed to sustainability so would you like to put some light on that topic as well?

Kate : Of course yes, sustainability is important to us and we try to sure commitment to sustainability in a variety of ways, one of them is the partnership 1% with the planet, so we commit to giving back 1% of all revenue to climate initiatives to help support different climate change programs. Another way is the sourcing of our ingredients, what we are using, a plant based wax is a renewable resource, all the wax we use is soy, it comes from American grown soybeans so it is both sustainable and renewable, and also biodegradable so that when you’re done with the candle and you’re scraping the bottom it is biodegradable so you don’t have to worry. We worry about sustainability when it comes our packaging, we try not to use any unnecessary packing, we reuse as much packing materials as we can like cardboard boxes and paper shred, we try not to use plastic. So it shows in a variety of places, first it shows up in the production, it shows up in the packing and then it shows up in our overall commitment to giving back.

Sanya : Okay that was great now coming to a very interesting question that your business is run by women, so what was the idea behind that?

Kate : The idea behind that was really I wanted to create a candle company thar created clean burning candles that wouldn’t trigger headaches for people and that would be something that they can bring to their homes and gift their loved ones and don;t have to worry about the ingredients that are into them. So I got really bad migraines when I was a kid and in high school so that was a motivating factor for me to leave my original career as a teacher and to start a company in order to fill this need I saw in the market. Early on it was a family based business and my mom was one of the primary people helping me with the business and I saw from there the power of having women running the company and meeting lost of other business owners, many of whom were women and just seeing all the cool things that they were doing while raising families and while working a main job. So I just saw the potential and I personally was drawn to stepping into a space that needs more women.

Sanya : Yeah that’s quite inspiring and now my last question would be like what makes your candles better than your competitors?

Kate : Our candles are better because we truly care about our customers, we care about each and every one of you, we started out small small business out of my kitchen, bedroom and we used to go and sell them in markets and really got to have those conversations with people, meet them and learn what is that you’re looking in a candle, why do you need a clean burning candle, what kind of scents do you like and why. When our company started it was all about our customers and as we’ve scaled we try to keep that at the forefront. We care so much about who they are what they are looking for and that sets our decisions when it comes to ingredients, sustainability, partnerships, who are we partnering with, what are values as a company. Our best-selling candle lasts up to 50 hours and you can feel the scent without even burning it.

Sanya : That seems amazing, with this we come to the end of this episode. It was so great interacting with you. I would totally recommend our followers to go and check out scented designs to get their hands on some amazing candles. Thank you so much Kate for coming here and interacting with us. Thank to our followers for watching this episode.

Kate : Thank you so much Sanya.