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Posted: Fri 12th Jul 2024
Founded in October 2023 by Shakira Roberts, The Candle Bar is a candle-making sanctuary, renowned for its high-quality container candles crafted from natural wax.
Located in Walthamstow, East London, the business also offers candle-making workshops that promote relaxation and self-care. Its mission is to create a cosy and engaging environment in which customers can explore a therapeutic and creative journey into the world of fragrances and crafts.
Founder Shakira draws on her extensive expertise in crafting candles, soaps and other natural products. Inspired by her love for nature and the Caribbean, she's designed a range of soy wax candles, refillable candles, wax melts, candle-making kits and more.
Joshua Ajibade, Business Support Manager for Grow London Local, referred Shakira to marketing specialist SME Needs, as well as connecting her with Digital Boost and Minority Business Matters. There, Shakira was able to access the free business support on offer.
Joshua also sent her links to webinars and blog posts on grants and business funding, and information on the Small Business Enterprise & Research Centre.
Watch the video to hear Shakira's story.
My name is Shakira Roberts and I'm the owner of The Candle Bar – a business that's surrounding candles and experiences.
I would say the biggest challenge is the confidence to continue. You wonder if you're doing the right thing. Everything else in terms of understanding accounting or understanding marketing and all those different things, I see it as more of a skill-building process.
So I'm like, "OK, I'm going to take on all sorts of programmes and see what I can learn from it". Because whether this continues on or not, I've built a skill, right?
I found Grow London Local through Instagram. There was some stuff that popped up and it was obviously very much related to me, about small business. "Are you a small business?" "Do you want to have access to certain programmes and stuff?" So I was like, "Hey, why not?"
And since then, I've been having lots of conversations with Grow London Local. I have a free marketing consultation with a marketing strategist for business.
Grow London Local was so inviting. It really allowed me to relax into having a conversation.
And I felt like they wanted to hear my story; they wanted to know what I was doing and [they] were reaching out to me saying, "Hey, would you want to try this?" So I'm ready to see where else I can position myself.
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