WAYPOINT CANDLES
Just a smell can take you across oceans in a moment, no passport required!
Go back to a city you fell in love with through a specific aroma...
Dream of far off places you will travel to in the future...
We created the Waypoint Candle as the vessel for invoking travel memories, both existing and yet to be made.
The first step in getting this project off the ground was to find a local Artisan here in Denver to collaborate with.
It was important to me to work with a fellow female entrepreneur to create something new and beautiful that would be mutually beneficial and raise both of us up in these uncertain times.
I am pleased to introduce Kristina from Candelaria Candles!
I instantly fell head over heels in love with her aesthetic, the candle design themselves, and the general vibe of her scents and candle styles. I reached out to Kristina and we were able to hit the ground running on this thing!
Once I knew who could turn this dream into a reality, I need to decide on which cities to launch. This was like picking your favorite trip, you love them all! I ended up choosing three cities that were so uniquely different from each other.
Denver is home and was the first patterned travel scarf, so that was a must. Then I knew I wanted something elegant and refined, so Paris was an easy choice. Then to round out the collection, I wanted something tropical and eccentric. Havana sealed the deal for our three cities!
Now came the hard part... How to capture the essence of a place through scents alone?
This required a nice long walk down memory lane. I started by remembering the overall character of the city. Then I thought about what I ate, drank, the people I met and did while I was there. I looked through souvenirs, photos, and travel journals to really ground myself in that place, that culture, that environment. The cultivated memories started to surface, and distinctly unique smells accompanied them.
How do you turn a memory smell into a description?! I wrote down emotions, feelings, phrases, anything to try to put that smell into words. It is never just a single stand-alone smell, it is the layers of different scents in different proportions that make the scent of a place come to life.
Here were some examples:
- City coming alive at night
- Warm, lovely, passionate people
- Celebrating, energetic, lively, dancing, dynamic, movement
- Intoxicating, overwhelming, beautiful chaos
Kristina then took my crazy list of words, emotions and feelings and crafted them into many different scent combinations. Since we weren't actually able to get together to smell these scent combinations, (thanks COVID) we had to go with samples, samples and more samples. The hard part of recreating a scent based on memory is that you have to smell it to know if its right!
Some scents were easier to nail down than others. It was an instant "Yes! That's it! That's Paris!" or a "Nope, not quite Denver". Trying to peel apart what wasn't quite working and think about what needed to be changed was unexpectedly difficult for me as a visual human. I found myself constantly aware of the smells around me. I was sniffing trees in the back yard and digging through the pantry to smell spices.
Designing the Candle
Designing the candle itself was a touch easier than designing the scents, but not much. Choosing the vessel was a balancing act of design aesthetic, size, shape and style. We love where we ended up!
The one piece of the design puzzle that I was absolutely obsessed with was the wooden laser cut candle lid. This was the canvas that I was looking for to incorporate the scarf textile designs into the candles! I tapped into my architectural background and translated the scarf patterns into the designs for the wooden lids.
Just for fun, here is an insight into the craziness that is launching a new product! This is a flow of all of the moving pieces that need to come together to make a new product launch happen!
Caitlin Blythe
Waypoint Goods // Owner & Founder
Caitlin began Waypoint Goods to help and inspire women to get out and travel while feeling safe and fashion forward. She creates custom patterns and designs for the travel scarves based on her travels. Her past life as an architect makes the brand contemporary and modern while focusing on empowering women to travel.
