At the risk of improving their website traffic, I just had to share this…
A friend just emailed me information on Yankee Candles new ‘Man Candles’. The men I know don’t need a candle to smell like mowed grass or a piece of timber… and what on earth is “Man Town” or “First Down”? Last time I smelled man town (which was admittedly about 10 years ago) was Oxford Street on a Saturday night and I can’t say I had much success.
Anyway, it got me thinking… if we WERE to fragrance Queen B candles with synthetic, petrochemical fragrant oils to appeal more to men, what flavours would you like to see?
Mitch has already suggested “Nullarbor ute”. Personally I have a bit of a penchant for slight the smell of manure you get as soon as you step onto a working property. Get those creative juices flowing… I’m sure they have an entire department focused on it at Yankee Candles – at Queen B we outsource.
Doing a tidy up last week I found a whole heap of candles in the melt down buckets that Tilly had rejected. Clearly he’d had a little disaster when dipping Bee Lights. It’s one of the joys of making things by hand! I decided to grab a few to keep me going over the weekend and they’re gorgeous. Absolutely. Completely. Utterly. Gorgeous. I have to say that it would be pretty great if all our disasters were this good!
Conjoined Bee Lights
Not a drip in sight…
Conjoined Bee Lights waiting for new homes
Order Bee Lights in the next week (offer ends on 25th June 2012) and mention this blog post and I’ll pop a couple of very limited edition (I hope) conjoined Bee Lights for your enjoyment.
Sometimes it helps to have no idea about cars or their mechanics…
Driving across the Nullarbor, we happened upon a town (it actually had a name) that consisted of a church on one side of the road and an abandoned house on the other. Mitch looked for enlightenment, I looked for treasure.
Previous Home of Cam Shaft Candlesticks
I emerged victorious a little while later with my new “candlesticks” in hand. I know enlightenment can be achieved simply by lighting a few beeswax candles. Anyway, beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder as Mitch thought they looked like rusted old cam shafts. I have an eye for potential, potential, potential. Renovators dream. A blank canvas. All things that get me excited!
About 2000km’s later and lots of elbow grease, I got to work on my new candlesticks over the weekend, and voila… if that’s not a thing of beauty, then I’m a pork chop. Now I just need to drill a hole in the top for a taper candle, sand off the bottom and fire them up. I’m told these are from a 6 cylinder Holden. Being a Holden ute girl, that was music to my ears. Never before have I been so fascinated by pistons and cylinders. Next week I’m going hunting for some 4 cylinder cam shafts. Happy days. I bet my parents are happy they paid for that private school education now!
Cam shaft candlesticks (before & after)
Reckon I should get a range of these on the market? At about 80cm tall, the drama queen in you will LOVE them!
… [if you’re American, you may know this as the No Assholes Rule… we spell differently here so that you can tell who can spell and who can’t…]
My recent trip across the Nullarbor with Mitch created many opportunities for long conversations (hell for Mitch, heaven for me)! One of the subjects which created much hilarity was about nightmare customers. Like every business, we’ve both had a few. Mitch told me that his company had a “no arseholes policy”. [I thought the policy brilliant. I thought Mitch brilliant. When I told him yesterday that I’d had cause to implement the policy and just how brilliant he was, he told me that the author was Robert Sutton from Harvard Business Review. I must have missed that article. I now think Robert Sutton is brilliant. I still think Mitch is funny.]
Anyhow, so, yesterday I deployed the rule. What gold. The lion roared. Talking about feeling empowered. The very rude retailer will no longer be stocking Queen B candles.
These are direct, word for word, quotes from our email exchange:
Retailer: “i just received stock and sadly 4 large beehives are slightly damaged”
Queen B: “Please send a photograph of any damaged stock… we’ll get them picked up… and send another pack”
Retailer: “They are slightly damaged, the bee’s are stuck to the bags and have chipped off.. a photo would’nt (sic) show the full extent of the damage…”
Queen B: “What would you like me to do?”
Retailer: “Replace!” (that was the entire email by the way)
Queen B: “Then please send a photograph of the damaged items as requested”
Retailer: “…You (sic) completely out of line”
Ironic really.
Apart from the obvious angst that these sorts of things cause, it is just entirely unnecessary. Thankfully given the nature of what we sell, we primarily attract gorgeous, lovely, thinking customers who send beautiful emails daily that nourish us and keep us going.
So let your inner lion roar. Life’s too short to be someone else’s punching bag. Better still, get it off your chest. Share with us your deployment of the “no arseholes policy”.
And to the myriad of wonderful people who engage with us every day… thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Your emails are read out loud to the team. Your calls are shared over tea. Your stories are shared with the neighbours in our industrial block at “Slow Cooker Thursday” lunches. Your words get us up in the morning and lull us to sleep at night. I LOVE youse all.
As an antidote, I recently had the opportunity to take my 4 year old niece to ballet. Puts it all in perspective really.
The July 2012 issue of Home Beautiful magazine has just hit newsagents with a really lovely profile on Queen B candles *blush*! Thank you Anna Koorey (for writing beautifully and making me sound lucid), Adam de Launay (for styling everything beautifully) and Sue Stubbs (for your gorgeous photography). The cake to the right of the photograph was a plum upside down cake that I cooked to serve warm when they arrived… we ate it cold about an hour later but it looks gorgeous in the pic! You can see the article here – 201207 Home Beautiful Style Insight – Queen B
Queen B Beeswax Candles 