Naris­sa Fras­er

For Tsian John, a love for scent­ed can­dles first turned in­to a hob­by, but lat­er blos­somed in­to a busi­ness ven­ture. Now, five years lat­er, she con­tin­ues to con­coct and ex­per­i­ment with fra­grances in The Scent­ed Lab.

The 34-year-old, who hails from Erin, said she made it her du­ty to pur­chase new scent­ed can­dles every time she trav­elled. “They are very ther­a­peu­tic to me,” she told WE Life and Cul­ture, adding that ol­fac­to­ry mem­o­ry (mem­o­ry trig­gered by scent) is an­oth­er ma­jor perk. She was ob­sessed with sweet, fruity scents, with some of her favourites in­clud­ing cher­ry blos­som and straw­ber­ry.

But grad­u­al­ly, she re­alised she was un­able to burn them for too long as she got headaches. “At first I thought (the prob­lem) was me and my tol­er­ance, but then I learnt it was what was be­ing put in­to the prod­ucts.” So dur­ing the much-dread­ed lock­down dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, a friend of hers–He­di Thomas–bought her a can­dle­mak­ing kit. She felt it was a good way to help with the bore­dom from be­ing stuck in­side.

John then bought can­dle-mak­ing books and spent hours on YouTube teach­ing her­self how to do it. She was a bit “on the fence” about whether to use soy, co­conut or beeswax, “But my sup­pli­er at the time said co­conut wax was the sweet spot.” So that’s what she chose to work with.

“It was fun,” she re­called with glee. “I just kept mak­ing can­dles and, be­fore you know it, I had all these can­dles and not enough time to burn them.” So she be­gan giv­ing them away to cowork­ers, friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers and they all had the same re­ac­tion: This smells re­al good and you should sell them.

Ad­mit­ted­ly, she said, she did not hop on board with the idea im­me­di­ate­ly be­cause she thought that was just a cute com­pli­ment. But the num­ber of com­pli­ments kept in­creas­ing every time. “So I re­searched how to start a busi­ness and start­ed from there,” she re­called.

She now of­fers a va­ri­ety of unique scents like flower shop, vanil­la bean, rainy nights, 90s break­fast, laun­dry day, and so many oth­ers. “At first, I tried to just do the ba­sic scents like every­one, but then I just want­ed to be dif­fer­ent and stand out, and of­fer things peo­ple may not be able to get any­where else,” she ex­plained. Every year, she tries to in­tro­duce new scents to her reg­u­lar ro­ta­tion, and there are even sea­son­al ones like Soft Kiss­es for Valen­tine’s Day and Man Cave for Fa­ther’s Day, for ex­am­ple.

She still re­mem­bers the feel­ing that took over when she sold her first can­dle. “My face was hurt­ing from smil­ing so hard be­cause I was just so hap­py,” she said as she laughed. “I was so ex­cit­ed. The per­son didn’t ques­tion my prices or any­thing like that. They just said, ‘I like this, and I’m go­ing to get it.’”

While she is cur­rent­ly on­line-based, she oc­ca­sion­al­ly sells at pop-up mar­kets across the coun­try. And when­ev­er peo­ple reach her booth, they pause. “Then I in­vite them across and I say, ‘Feel free to smell them,’ and their re­sponse is al­ways, ‘I smelling them al­ready. They re­al strong.’” She is al­ways thrilled by the pos­i­tive re­ac­tions to her cre­ations.

She said the progress she has made with her busi­ness over the years con­tin­ues to sur­prise her. “You of­ten hear busi­ness­es fail with­in the first two years. This is my fifth year,” she be­gan. “It was not easy, es­pe­cial­ly as I do every­thing my­self, but I love my busi­ness, and I will not give up on it.”