In­trigued by chem­i­cals fus­ing to­geth­er and form­ing some­thing re­mark­able, Re­bec­ca Sub­rath took this knowl­edge and start­ed her own unique can­dle-mak­ing busi­ness.

Now, some two and a half years lat­er, the Sec­ond Haven Can­dle Com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to make waves in the lo­cal mar­ket and prospects for re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pan­sion are bright.

Birthed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, the Sec­ond Haven Can­dle Com­pa­ny trans­ports its user to the world of rich scents and al­so the aro­mas of a Tri­ni Christ­mas, while al­so pro­tect­ing the en­vi­ron­ment.

“I tend to make a lot of things dur­ing Christ­mas and give them as gifts,” said Sub­rath, 23, as she shared her in­sights with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian about her com­pa­ny and the im­pe­tus be­hind it.

In 2021, she was en­cour­aged and in­spired to sell her items and hence her jour­ney in­to the world of com­merce be­gan.

On choos­ing the name of her com­pa­ny, Sub­rath fur­ther ex­plained, “I want­ed my scents to trans­port peo­ple to a sec­ond haven when they smell it. Trinidad, in a sense, is like a sec­ond haven that trans­ports peo­ple to beau­ti­ful places.”

All her can­dles are la­belled af­ter lo­cal names such as “Sor­rel,” “Eggnog,” “Sweet Parang,” “Tri­ni Christ­mas” and “Home-made Wine.”

The bio­chem­istry and bi­ol­o­gy fi­nal-year Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­des stu­dent is al­ready a suc­cess­ful en­tre­pre­neur as her unique soy-wax can­dles con­tin­ues to gar­ner much in­ter­est.

Why soy wax?

Soy wax is made from en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, re­new­able re­sources, where­as clas­sic paraf­fin wax is made from pe­tro­le­um and is non-re­new­able.

Sub­rath sources her scent­ed oils from three dif­fer­ent sites on­line, based in the US, while oth­er items like ves­sels, wicks and pack­ag­ing are lo­cal­ly bought.

While it is not dif­fi­cult to ob­tain her in­gre­di­ents, from time to time Sub­rath faces chal­lenges re­gard­ing ship­ping costs.

“The ship­ping costs fluc­tu­ate a lot. The cost of one pack­age can range from TT$85 to TT$600 to clear and that is through a lo­cal couri­er com­pa­ny,” she ex­plained.

De­spite this, sales con­tin­ue to do well.

Can­dles range from $45 to $120, de­pend­ing on the size.

Cur­rent­ly, the most pop­u­lar and best sell­er is the “Dan­ish Cook­ies.”

“It is very strong but it is al­so calm­ing a the same time. Sor­rel is the sec­ond favourite,” Sub­rath added.

How­ev­er, she al­so crafts can­dles out­side of the Christ­mas sea­son of­fer­ing scents such as “Cof­fee (Ma­co)” and “Vanil­la (Ta­ban­ka)”

As her can­dles con­tin­ue to grow in pop­u­lar­i­ty, so too do Sub­rath’s or­ders as she of­ten works up to Christ­mas Eve to en­sure cus­tomers re­ceive their prod­ucts on time.

Not­ing that her prof­it mar­gins re­main healthy, Sub­rath said, “With my small­est can­dle I make about $16 and then with the big­ger ones I make about $40.”

Over time, Sub­rath said, she has seen a gen­er­al growth in the de­mand for can­dles on the lo­cal mar­ket, not­ing that small busi­ness­es which spe­cialise in this have been mush­room­ing.

Asked about her par­tic­u­lar clien­tèle, Sub­rath said many of her cus­tomers are uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents.

“They use can­dles while they are study­ing and they use them while they are hav­ing a get to­geth­er in their apart­ment. Al­so, there are many mid­dle-aged women who buy them as gifts, so on Moth­er’s Day or Valen­tine’s Day, they are good sell­ers,” she added.

Like any oth­er busi­ness, the Sec­ond Haven Can­dle Com­pa­ny has its peak pe­ri­ods; these are Moth­er’s Day, Valen­tine’s Day and dur­ing Christ­mas.

Why these times?

Ac­cord­ing to Sub­rath, can­dles make the per­fect gifts for these oc­ca­sions and have tra­di­tion­al­ly re­mained top sell­ers.

For Christ­mas last year, she sold around 30 can­dles and at her first time of­fer­ing her prod­ucts for Moth­er’s Day she sold 17.

Valen­tine’s Day 2022, Sub­rath sold 17 of her can­dles.

This year, she hopes sales will im­prove as in­ter­est con­tin­ues to grow based on the feed­back she has been re­ceiv­ing on her dif­fer­ent so­cial me­dia pages.

But what makes the prod­ucts of Sec­ond Haven Can­dle Com­pa­ny stand out?

Apart from their catchy names de­rived from the lo­cal cul­ture, they are in­fused with at­trac­tive colours.

“I have yel­low, green, red, blue...you don’t find a lot of can­dles that are colour­ful and I re­al­ly want­ed to match the cul­ture that we have in Trinidad which is very di­verse and colour­ful and I want­ed to repli­cate that.

“I re­al­ly want­ed my colours to pop to rep­re­sent the Trin­bag­on­ian cul­ture. My can­dles al­so have em­bell­ish­ments on top with the ac­tu­al in­gre­di­ents such as clove,” Sub­rath ex­plained.

Go­ing for­ward

Cur­rent­ly, she goes to var­i­ous craft mar­kets to sell her can­dles, which are al­so avail­able at two shops: one in Diego Mar­tin and the oth­er in Curepe with one busi­ness be­ing a flower shop.

“Can­dles and flow­ers tend to go hand in hand,” Sub­rath said.

Even­tu­al­ly, Sub­rath wants her “own lit­tle can­dle stu­dio,” tak­ing her prod­ucts to the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al are­na and there­by, show­cas­ing the tal­ents of T&T’s crafters.

Re­cent­ly, she has been con­tact­ed by Carib­shop­per.

Ac­cord­ing to its web­site, Carib­shop­per is a mar­ket­place for au­then­tic Caribbean-made prod­ucts, con­nect­ing Caribbean cul­ture with glob­al con­sumers and fos­ter­ing eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment in the is­lands.

It de­liv­ers icon­ic Ja­maican and Trinida­di­an prod­ucts in the fol­low­ing cat­e­gories: food and drink, beau­ty and well­ness, home and liv­ing, jew­el­ry, ap­par­el, and pa­per and nov­el­ty.

For Sub­rath this presents an ide­al op­por­tu­ni­ty for ex­pan­sion.

“Right now, I am look­ing in­to that. The agency will have my prod­ucts on a web­site and when some­one in the US or in the Caribbean wants a can­dle, they would source it from that on­line com­pa­ny and then they send it,” Sub­rath said, not­ing that she is ex­pect­ed to soon fi­nalise this deal.

Re­gard­ing the To­ba­go mar­ket, Sub­rath does de­liv­ery to the sis­ter is­land and she has plans to have her can­dles sold at the air­port to fur­ther reach that tourist de­mo­graph­ic

“I am hop­ing that comes through by next year. I am al­so hop­ing to have my can­dles at the dif­fer­ent malls,” she added

Sub­rath al­so of­fered words of ad­vise to bud­ding en­tre­pre­neurs who, at times, may feel to give up.

“Find some­thing you’re re­al­ly pas­sion­ate about and that you could stick with. It is tough in the slow pe­ri­ods but con­tin­ue to do a lot of re­search and find out what peo­ple like and then try to repli­cate that,” she sug­gest­ed.