The Ice N Fire Story

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒂 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝑰𝒄𝒆 𝑵 𝒇𝒊𝒓𝒆 𝒄𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒂 𝒗𝒂𝒍𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒆’𝒔 𝒈𝒊𝒇𝒕 𝒓𝒆𝒒𝒖𝒆𝒔𝒕 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒎𝒚 𝒘𝒊𝒇𝒆 𝑱𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒄𝒂.

In early January 2016 my wife had mentioned to me that if I was looking for something to 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐞’𝐬 𝐃𝐚𝐲 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞 “𝐑𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐂𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐥𝐞” 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 on Facebook and she would really like to give one a try. I had no idea what she was talking about but as most men do I said okay and filed it away in my brain for later.

As January rolled on I was working on my computer one night (as usual) and I thought I better consider ordering that valentine’s gift in case shipping takes some time. I found the company that she was referring to and was blown away that there was an 8-10 week delay on shipping posted on their website! I was floored! How can a candle have that long of a shipping delay and who waits that long for something like this?

After some research, I found that there were many companies in the USA offering these products but as per typical fashion, Canada was late to the party. There was basically only one company in Canada that had been open for a couple of years and had a huge following on Facebook. I believed I could improve on many things that they did as well I wanted to make our own candles which I knew they didn’t.

I told Jessica I really don’t see her getting one of these for Valentine’s day but if she could help design the candles and get them made I could put the company and website together to sell them. From what I had seen there were a few things I believed we could do better than what was currently available.

As well Jessica wanted to set us apart by using a square votive and adding some color to our collection. We also wanted to make sure our candles were made of the highest quality ingredients using only 100% soy wax. I knew this would raise the costs a bit but would provide a better finished product to our consumers and set us apart from our competition. That night was when I came up with the name and registered the domain.

Over the next few weeks, we figured out production, shipping and all the other starting details. 𝙒𝙚 𝙟𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙤𝙛 𝙞𝙩 𝙖𝙨 𝙖 𝙝𝙤𝙢𝙚-𝙗𝙖𝙨𝙚𝙙 𝙗𝙪𝙨𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙞𝙣 𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙗𝙖𝙨𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙝𝙤𝙥𝙚𝙨 𝙢𝙖𝙮𝙗𝙚 𝙞𝙩 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙜𝙧𝙤𝙬 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚.

I planned to launch the website near the end of February but wanted to generate interest with a pre-launch on Facebook. 𝐀𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐚 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐳𝐲!

I started the Ice N Fire Facebook Fan Page about 10 days prior to opening and started a contest post in hopes to go viral. By launch day February 19th we had about 100 candles ready to go and already had 1000 followers on our fan page!

Not knowing what to expect I opened the website at midnight and our first sale came in about 20 minutes later. By the end of our first full day, we already had about 20 orders come in! By the end of that week we had a stack of over 100 orders backorder.

We were not set up for this type of demand. My wife had set up 4 crock pots for the 4 different scents and she could only pour about 12 candles per scent at a time. We were getting backordered fast! 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑐𝑎 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑢𝑠𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 1 𝑜𝑟 2 𝐴𝑀 𝑝𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐼 𝑤𝑎𝑠 ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒, 𝑐𝑢𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑟 𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒 𝐼 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ.

Over the next few weeks I juggled some big changes. We sourced some bigger production equipment and found our first 1000 square foot warehouse.

𝑊𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑐ℎ 15𝑡ℎ 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐼 ℎ𝑖𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑓𝑖𝑟𝑠𝑡 𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑜𝑦𝑒𝑒, 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑦𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟!

At this point, we were a few hundred orders behind but with the bigger equipment, more space and an employee we were able to get caught up quickly. I wanted to always pride ourselves on shipping orders as fast as we can (same day if possible) and giving our customers the best customer service possible.

For the future, we are continuing to grow our product sku’s as fast as possible. As all our growth has been organic with no outside funding this can be challenging but we see a bright future. We will continue to increase our core wax and body care products but by expanding into essential oils with our Ice E Oil brand and many different diffusers it will give us the ability to offer more choices to our customers. We plan to continue to expand on our product line as well as bring some of our key consultants together into one venue to celebrate the growth and plan for the future!

This is our story
Sincerely
Steve & Jessica Malin
www.icenfire.ca