Not all candles are born equal - you may be wondering why you can pick up a candle for £5 at your local homeware megastore but when you browse online, you find the prices range from £5 to £50 or sometimes even more...so...what's going on?
100% HAND POURED
Now, there's a slightly contentious issue around the terms 'handmade' or 'hand poured' in the candle and diffuser world - when we say hand poured, we mean our hands pick up a jug and physically pour each candle, using a weighing scale to ensure we get the correct net weight of each item.
However, some companies use the term 'handmade' in a lose fashion. The items may be placed on a conveyor belt, in their thousands, with a human using a machine to pump wax in to multiple containers at the same time. At the end of the production line, another person will be busy adding labels and boxes - it's still handmade but on a 'manufacturer' scale, unlike Country & Cove candles, which are artisan made by one person, through the whole process!
For truly hand poured candles from other suppliers, you'll need to look at things like 'artisan made' or 'small batch' - this usually means you're dealing with a small business, mostly individual candle makers who will pour a candle just for you.
THE BLENDING PROCESS
Did you know, it takes up to 3 hours to make just one batch of scented candles! We take our time. Our wax melter can only melt a small amount of wax per batch, we only pour and label 24 candles per hour - by the time you factor in the costs of materials and lighting/heating etc, our products are obviously going to be more expensive than anything you can find in a megastore, where they have hundreds of the same candle in stock! However, with Country & Cove candles, you can be assured of quality, you know each item has been made by hand, we've blended the fragrance oils with the soy wax at the correct temperature, we've poured at 60 degrees....we've ticked all the boxes for artisan made!
NATURAL INGREDIENTS
At Country & Cove, we only ever use materials and ingredients sourced from other British companies - it goes without saying, our soy wax and diffuser oils are Vegan Approved and are sourced from certified manufacturers.
Our soy wax for example, this is sourced from sustainable and eco conscious manufacturers. Our diffuser oil? That's Vegan Certified and uses fewer chemicals than some others.
Should we use 100% natural ingredients? If we did, the cost would be much higher and, practically speaking, it's very difficult and damaging to the environment to make rose scented candles from actual roses - this would not be eco conscious at all and would be horrendously expensive.
You can of course find candles that are more natural than ours, Bees Wax candles for example. However, these won't have a wide variety of fragrances, usually they are just bees wax scented, so they can be labelled as 100% natural.
If you're perfume sensitive or concerned about chemicals in any way, Bees Wax candles may be the way to go!
MAKERS CAPACITY
As you may be aware, we are not a manufacturer with hundreds of staff and a big warehouse. We are a small batch candle maker, which means there's only 2 or 3 people who can actually make our candles. The nature of the beast is that 1,000 candle glasses are going to be a lot cheaper to purchase than 100, it's a simple economy of scale. Where it may cost us £10 to make a candle, a large scale manufacturer can make the same thing for £5 - although, it loses some of its value when you think there will be thousands of other people who have purchased the same candle as you - with Country & Cove, we guarantee that you'll be one of only a few hundred people worldwide to sniff our scents!
