Designer Profile: type.lites
We’re excited that type.lites, an SF-made line of natural soy candles, is now available in the shop at New Coast Studios. The packaging is so charming, and the scents so heavenly, they’re hard to resist! We recently talked to Crystal and Tricia, former roommates turned business partners, to learn more about their Bay Area company.
How did you get started making candles? Tricia was the catalyst. She saw a class for candle making and asked if Crystal would go with her, and that introduced us to the world of candles. That year, we made a batch for our friends and family for holiday gifts and they all loved them and encouraged us to sell them. One of my friends was looking for a candle line for a boutique she was opening and type.lites was born.
What’s it like running your own company? There are so many great things about running our own company. Aside from having the creative freedom to be our own decision makers, we also really enjoy the work. We love the relationships that have grown from meeting our fellow creatives. Many of these relationships have led to exciting business opportunities. Living in the Bay Area, we’re lucky to be part of a culture that encourages designers, techies and small businesses to work together. Having the support of our community has been amazing and its one of the many reasons we take pride in saying our candles are “hand poured in the San Francisco Bay Area”. Our biggest challenge is juggling full times jobs while running a fledgling business. We’re not able to give as much time to type.lites as we’d like and saying “no” to opportunities is very difficult!
What inspires you in the design world right now? The Bay Area is such a hotbed of creativity and we’re constantly feeling inspired by everything around us. Participating in shows/fairs like Renegade Craft Fair, Urban Air Market, etc, allows us to see so many refreshing and smart ideas made by small businesses. We also can’t get enough of vintage inspired anything or creative uses of typography, since that’s part of the basis of our business.
Which is your favorite candle? Our candles are like our children, how can we pick just one?! We’d probably pick Seaglass and Bartlett Pear as favorites. Ask us again a week from now and we’ll probably have a different answer!
What’s one thing we might not know about candles that you find interesting? We’ve been able to learn so much about candle making through our business. We get lots of questions about burn time, but the answer varies because everyone burns their candles differently. For burn periods, the best rule is to burn an hour per diameter inch. So for our 8oz candles which are 3 inches in diameter, an approximate 3 hour burn period is optimal each time. This allows the wax to melt to the edges to create what is called a “burn pool.” We did a series on our blog about burn time that has more information as well.
Thank you for sharing with us, Crystal and Tricia!