Home Fragrance Academy

In 2020 Cosy Aromas was flying. Orders were coming in faster than we could fulfil them so we made a decision that felt completely logical at the time.

We turned the Facebook ads off.

Just temporarily. Just to catch up. Just to get the logistics under control.

It took 4 weeks to recover the momentum we lost in those few days.
4 weeks of rebuilding audiences, restarting campaigns, waiting for the algorithm to find its feet again. 4 weeks of lower revenue while we clawed back what we'd had before.

The lesson wasn't that we shouldn't have fixed the logistics. The logistics absolutely needed fixing. The lesson was that turning the ads off was the wrong way to do it.

If your operations can't keep up with demand, fix the operations. Hire someone. Change the process. Find a way. But keep the ads running.

The moment you turn them off you're not just pausing. You're starting again. And starting again costs far more than most people realise.

When we decided to get Waxkind into stockists we brought in a sales agent to help us do it.

He tore the brand apart. The packaging was wrong. The displays were wrong. The brand messaging was wrong. The pricing was wrong. According to him there was barely anything worth taking out to retailers.

We sat with that for a bit. Because when someone who's supposed to know the industry tells you everything is wrong, you at least have to consider it.

But the more we thought about it the more we realised what was actually happening. He wanted an easy job. A brand he could walk into any retailer with and get a yes without having to work for it. Waxkind wasn't that. It needed someone who actually believed in it.

So we stopped relying on him and did it ourselves.

100 stockists in 3 months.

Not because the packaging was perfect or the displays were flawless. Because we found the right people, started the right conversations and followed a process that actually worked.

If you want to get your products into shops, this will work for you: https://www.homefragrance.academy/wholesale

In 2022 we were weeks away from opening two shops. One in Bury St Edmunds, one in Saffron Walden. We'd done the viewings, we loved the locations, it felt like the right next step.

Then Russia invaded Ukraine. The cost of living crisis hit almost overnight. Consumer confidence collapsed.

We sat down and looked at the numbers. Not our feelings about it. Not how excited we'd been. Not how much work had already gone into getting to that point.

Just the numbers.

And the numbers were black and white. It wasn't the right time.

We walked away.

No lengthy debate. No second guessing. No convincing ourselves it would probably be fine.

One of the most important things you can develop as a business owner is the ability to make big decisions quickly and cleanly when the data tells you to. Not every opportunity is the right opportunity just because you've already invested time in it.

Looking back it was absolutely the right call. I have no doubt about that.

Every year on Willow's birthday, parcels would start arriving at the warehouse.

Not for us. For her.

Treats, toys and cards from our Cosy Aromas customers. People who had never met her in person but felt like they knew her because she was just always there - in the photos, in the videos, pottering around the warehouse while we packed orders.

Delivery drivers would stop and make a fuss of her. Customers who came to collect orders would ask to meet her before they even looked at their parcels.

We never planned any of that. It just happened because we let people in. We shared the real version of what we were building - the chaos, the late nights, the dog sleeping under the packing table - and people connected with it in a way that no amount of polished product photography ever could.

A community like that doesn't happen overnight. But when it does, it becomes the most valuable thing your business has.

We still miss her every single day.

Every day at 3pm I'd check Shopify.

That was the moment Royal Mail collected the parcels. The moment I'd know whether it had been a good day or not.

Under £1,000 and the panic would set in immediately. I'd fire out a discount code. Send an unplanned email. Launch something we hadn't prepared properly. Anything to claw back some sales before the day was done.

It worked sometimes. Just enough to keep me doing it. But it never actually solved anything. The next day the same anxiety was back. The same 3pm check. The same reaction if the number wasn't where I needed it to be.

That's what reactive marketing does to you. It keeps you just comfortable enough to never fix the real problem.

The day that changed was the day we stopped reacting and started building a proper system underneath the business. One that generated orders consistently whether we were pushing or not.

The 3pm check didn't disappear. But it stopped being something I dreaded.

Download the free Consistent Sales Gameplan - the exact system that made the difference. 👉 http://www.homefragrance.academy/newsletter

Black Friday 2018. £1,000 in a single day. Cosy Aromas was only 8 months old. Tamar filled a postal sack for the very first time and we both just stood there looking at it.
I
t felt enormous. And it was - for where we were at that point.
Black Friday 2019. £68,000. Just the two of us. By the end of the day we knew we had to hire our first employee because there was simply no way we could keep up on our own.

Same two people. Same products. One year apart.

What changed wasn't how hard we were working. We were already working every hour we had. What changed was everything we'd built around the business in those twelve months. The systems, the operations, the way orders were processed and dispatched. The foundations that meant when the demand came, we could actually handle it.

That's the bit nobody talks about. Not just how to get the sales. But how to be ready when they arrive.

For a long time we sold our wax melts at £5 and genuinely thought we were doing ok.

We weren't.

Because we hadn't properly accounted for everything. The fragrance oil, the wax, the packaging, the labels, the postage materials, the platform fees, the payment processor fees. When you sit down and add all of that up properly the number left over looks very different to what you imagined.

Then we started approaching the VAT threshold and it became very clear very quickly that we couldn't grow the business on those margins.

We had to make a change.

We put the price up to £5.99. And we were nervous. Not because the increase wasn't justified but because we didn't know how customers would react.

So we didn't just do it quietly and hope nobody noticed. We told people in advance. We explained why. We were honest about it.

The reaction was almost entirely positive. Because people respect honesty. What they don't respect is finding out a price went up without any explanation.

That one decision gave us breathing room we didn't have before. Room to run ads. Room to make offers that didn't hurt us. Room to actually reinvest in growing the business without feeling like we were going backwards with every sale.

If you're not completely sure your pricing is right, this is worth five minutes of your time. 👉 http://www.homefragrance.academy/candle-brand-pricing-kit

"I've tried everything. Nothing works. I feel like giving up."

I hear this more than you'd think.

And I get it. When you're putting everything into your business and the sales still aren't consistent it's exhausting. It genuinely feels like nothing is working.

But here's what I've noticed after working with over 1,000 home fragrance brands. When someone says they've tried everything, what they usually mean is they've tried the same few things repeatedly. Post more on Instagram. Launch a new scent. Run a discount. Wait. Repeat.

That's not trying everything. That's reacting to the same problem with the same tools and expecting something to change.

The brands that break out of that cycle aren't necessarily working harder. They just stop doing what everyone else is doing and start building something underneath the business that works whether they're pushing or not.

That's what the free Sales Scorecard is designed to show you. Where the gaps actually are. Not a guess. Not generic advice. Your specific situation in 60 seconds.

👉 Take our free Sales Scorecard - it takes 60 seconds and shows you exactly where your sales system is losing you orders. http://homefragrance.academy/scorecard

Rachel from Little Ideas With Love has been working with us and is seeing all round growth across her business.

This is exactly why we built Home Fragrance Academy. Not just to teach the theory but to watch real home fragrance brand owners actually implement it and see their business change.

When you get the right foundations in place - the pricing, the offer, the email list, the community - everything starts to move in the right direction at once.

That's what Rachel is experiencing right now and we couldn't be more proud of her.

If you want to understand what a proper sales system looks like for your brand, the free Consistent Sales Gameplan is the best place to start. 👉 www.homefragrance.academy/newsletter