Female Founder Series - Bijou Candles

We are proud to honor and celebrate Pride Month this June. At ALLY Shoes we love featuring female founded brands. Bijou candles, founded by Alaina and Jocelyn are sharing with us their business, what makes them different from other home fragrances and how they have overcome challenges. 

ALLY Shoes: Tell us what inspired you to start Bijou candles? 

Bijou: We started Bijou back in 2017 after realizing we were both fancy candle "hoarders". We were obsessed with having our space smell like our favorite scents, but we were loath to light them because they were pricy. We thought, there has to be a way to make luxury level candles at a more accessible price and that's exactly what we did!

ALLY Shoes: How do you come up with the names behind each candle? 

Bijou: How we decided to name our candles and come up with our collection themes is actually the answer to another problem we were having – there was no chic home decor that played homage to our fave pop culture icons. Everything that was out there was more novelty or aimed at kids & teens. We personally thought it would be so cool to have an aesthetically pleasing, scented candle inspired by faves like Stevie Nicks, Whitney Houston, or even Sabrina the Teenage Witch!

ALLY Shoes: What sets you apart in the home fragrance space? 

Bijou: A lot of home fragrance companies deliver great scents and pretty vessels, but we're amping it up by adding that pop-culture element. A lot of the inspiration behind our candles really means a lot to our customers (ourselves included!). For example, we just launched The Dynamos Collection which is inspired by Mamma Mia, and we got so many messages from our customers telling us how much joy Mamma Mia brings them and that it's more than just candles to them. There's really nothing better than getting messages like that!

ALLY Shoes: Share with us a challenging time in the business and what you did to overcome it? 

Bijou: 2020 was a real challenge in the e-commerce space because we suddenly had a large influx of new customers shopping online and we had the challenge of getting way more inventory during a time when so many restrictions, due to Covid-19, made our production very tricky. We found our best way to overcome this was to be as transparent as possible with our customers. When things were super backordered, we let everyone know and offered pre-orders. We made sure to keep our customers regularly updated on shipping timelines and thankfully they were very understanding. 

ALLY Shoes: Who is your Ally? 

Bijou: This is going to sound so corny, but it's really each other. As a married couple running a small business, we have to be each other's champion and communicate super well. We are definitely one of those couples that loves creating together and that has really been the driving force for the two of us.