Herberowe Candles

Our apothecary botanically-inspired candles and diffusers are handcrafted in small batches in our waxery and workshop in Lower Heyford, in the heart of the Oxfordshire countryside.

 We use 100% vegan wax, a blend of rapeseed and coconut wax from sustainable sources. Our fragrance oils are blends of fine perfume grade fragrance and essential oils and include elements of flowers, leaves, bark, roots, seeds, herbs and spices. Our diffusers are made with a 100% vegan base liquid.

What does Herberowe mean?

Our name Herberowe is named after an ancient landscape feature nestled in the countryside near our home in the Cherwell Valley. We discovered the name on an old map and decided to adopt it and save it from being lost.

It also has meanings and origins that encompass home, a safe place and sanctuary and is the perfect name for our range of home fragrance products which are inspired by the powerful, natural effects of herbs, plants, leaves and flowers. Our vision for the future is to create our own limited edition ranges of signature fragrances.

So how did it all start?

As a child, Sarah loved to make rose petal ‘perfume’! This involved leaving rose petals in jars of water to try and make our own scent - it didn’t really work or take off as an early business idea! However an interest and love of anything that smells good has remained!

 Our business journey began out of necessity and obsession and by accident ! A desire to fill our home with quality fragrances inspired by nature that didn’t aggravate Colin’s asthma, became a fulfilling lockdown activity that soon developed into a rewarding side hustle and is now a fully fledged kitchen table start-up business.

As Sarah’s scented candle obsession grew ever stronger, Colin’s desire to blow out every candle increased on the basis that none of them were really doing his asthma much good. We knew we had to find a recipe that worked to satisfy Sarah’s obsession and prevent Colin being unable to breathe!

Friends and family thought we had lost our minds!

 We spent 2020 developing our ideas and learning our craft to make sure our candles are the best they can be and our early recipes were simple and just used lavender essential oil. We immersed ourselves in YouTube videos to learn the craft and science of candle making and slowly started to see really good results. Our friends and family thought we were mad but soon came round to the idea when we gave them free samples to try! They all loved the long lasting fragrances as well as the soot and smoke free clean burn that our candles produced.

The sustainability question…

Being as sustainable as we can has become a big mission and can be challenging. We decided to choose a wax that was from 100% sustainable sources and that’s why we use a luxurious blend of coconut and rapeseed wax - Colin has big ideas about us growing and harvesting our own rapeseed to make our own wax - it’s a big ambition and is work in progress! All our fragrances are IFRA approved as safe to use in home fragrance products and are a mixture of blended essential oils and fine perfume grade scents - we keep it simple and like to stick to those inspired by nature. Our glassware is made in the UK and reusable - we encourage our customers to repurpose our containers. Our packaging is recyclable and we reuse packing boxes where possible.

The excitement of the first order will stay with us forever - Thanks Sue!

After much debate and some amazing feedback which made us think we really could be on to something, despite the crowded scented candle market place, we tentatively launched a very basic website, posted a few photos on social media and when that first order cha chinged in we were beyond excited! A lovely lady called Sue was our first ever online customer - she was looking for locally made natural candles to use in the rooms at her AirBnB.. It was a really big moment for us - a heady mix of excitement and fear! Sue has stuck with us and orders from us regularly - we will be forever grateful.

We didn’t win but it didn’t matter !

We were thrilled to reach the finals of the 2021 Blenheim Palace Start Up Competition. Since then, our business has grown beyond all expectations, and our brand has been truly embraced by some of Oxfordshire’s favourite and most prestigious retail venues and events, as well as by a growing band of very loyal customers who have supported our business on its journey. Our first ever event was at the palace and really put us on the map - we sold out on day 1 so pulled an all nighter to re-stock for the following day! We were shattered but knew we had a business! Figuring out stock levels was a vertical learning curve!

We have worked with the charity The Brothers Trust  –  a project founded by actor Tom Holland and his family to support smaller charities. We were delighted to be asked to make hundreds of hand-poured tealights that were sold as part of a handmade tealight holder to raise much-needed funds for charities supporting young people.

We also pledge to donate our products to supported accommodation projects that provide homes and help people manage challenging life experiences., and regularly donate our products to local charity events.

We hope you have enjoyed our story so far - this will be updated as things progress and our small business grows!

Sarah & Colin Adams

Founders

www.herberowe.co.uk