Candlemaker: Staying Just Big Enough is Key to High-Quality Product

The first thing you're hit with when entering Brenda Hunter's home in Haddam — where she runs CT River Candles — is an overwhelming aroma.

Make that aromas — of lemongrass, coconut lime, basil and herb, blueberry muffin, orange chili pepper, sunwashed linen, and her most popular scent, pumpkin souffle.

While recovering from back surgery five years ago, she began to rethink her career as an information technology manager. Always a crafty type, Hunter turned to the web for information on candle making.

"I started researching and the more I read the more soy came up as a better alternative, more ecofriendly, more green," she explains.

She started out with small, handmade batches of candles and through trial and error has arrived at a core group of scents (with each oil combination a closely guarded secret). Business grew through word-of-mouth and after she launched a website.

Now, Hunter says, she has retailers across the state who stock her candles, among them Good Cause Gifts in Berlin, Water's Edge Resort & Spa in Westbrook, Chamard Vineyards in Clinton, Future's Gift Store and Malloves Jewelers in Middletown and Restoration Lighting Gallery and Connecticut Lighting Centers in Hartford.

She just filled a very large order for "Wick-ed Good" Soy Candles and More, which just opened at the Enfield Square and sells CT River Candles exclusively.

"It's become quite a little business," Hunter says. She's at the point now, working 35 hours a week making candles, where getting any bigger would jeapordize the excellence her customers have come to expect.

"A lot of people like handmade. They look for quality in a small company. There's something about the handmade part of it," she says.

"[My husband] always tells me to stay small." And her husband and daughter pitch in regularly with the labor and marketing. Alan gets 50-box pallets shipments of wax delivered to his shop, Hunter's Pool Center in Wallingford, and transports them home, and will lend his jar-wicking services on occasion.

"She's my biggest fan," Hunter says of her daughter, who brings candles to work to sell for mom.

And like a mother with a big brood, Hunter can't pick a favorite. "I think I like all the scents I have here, every one of them."

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