The English Teacher Candle Co. Gets An A+ For Effort

“My apartment, my dog, and I smell like Frasier fir,” says Kori Rimany, candle maker and owner of The English Teacher Candle Co. It’s an occupational hazard, especially when you’re burning the wax, adding the fragrance, pouring it into hundreds of vessels and testing each new product right in your home. And yes, she is the English teacher as titled in her company’s name — first and always a teacher, despite her growing candle business.

“Teaching is my priority, my life’s work,” Rimany says. Now in her seventh year at the Frederick Gunn School in Washington, Connecticut, she lives at the boarding school, teaching English, coaching in the afternoons, and doing dorm duty one evening a week. Like the rest of us, the pandemic inspired her (and gave her time) to explore her longtime interest in candles.

“I wouldn’t consider myself artistic, but crafty and creative,” she says. “Over the years I’ve tried to make gifts for friends and family,” and that included candle making. Rimany decided to start a business, setting up a website and social media accounts from the get-go. (She also started graduate school the same month — with hindsight, dual initiatives she would not recommend doing simultaneously). Her knowledge of the process is self-taught, aided by YouTube videos, Candle Science (a candle and fragrance supplier) and a large online community.

There she was, in her apartment, standing next to the stove for hours, melting wax in a double boiler. She started with what she could handle — small new fragrance launches in batches of 40. She’d build up the excitement around the launches through social media, and then sell out within a few minutes. As the business expanded, she moved into a different apartment with a second bedroom, which became her dedicated workshop space. Now she can make more candles at a faster pace.

“People started following me on Instagram to see what the next launch would be,” says Rimany. In the beginning, she sold to friends and co-workers, but social media has given her national visibility and launches have gone to 150 candles at a time. At first, most of her business came from online sales, but now the bulk of the business is wholesale and custom orders. Candles are a popular favor, and she’ll create a scent and labeling for any occasion.

All of her candles are made from soy wax, which offers a cleaner burn than beeswax. She’s not Yankee Candle with endless and not-found-in-nature fragrances. Some of her scents come out of her memory, especially her signature collection of Skiff Mountain fragrances.

“I grew up in Kent on Skiff Mountain, and the seasonal collections remind me of my home on the mountain,” she says. Her first candle, the Skiff Mountain Summer, was a blend of tomato vine and basil leaf, redolent of her mom’s garden. Skiff Mountain Fall is a blend of apple cider and clove, with notes of cinnamon and nutmeg. Another fall scent this year is black tea and bergamot. She offers, of course, a pumpkin spice scent, a customer favorite, although not one on top of her list.

“At first, I was making only the scents I love,” says Rimany. “But over the years I’ve learned that I need to make candles that don’t fit my own scent profile.” Customers were asking for pumpkin spice, and they got it.

Tied into her English teacher theme are the matchbooks that come with every order. They feature the cover of a book she has taught or is currently teaching, and are also available for purchase, allowing customers to choose from whatever title lights their fire, including The Great Gatsby, Franny and Zooey, My Antonia or Great Expectations, among others.

When we spoke, Rimany was deep into pouring hundreds of Christmas candles and preparing to launch her latest holiday collection in three different vessels on Cyber Monday. She’s also making the rounds of holiday markets,

“Candle making involves a lot of science,” says the English teacher. A lot of trial and error, too: each scent requires weeks of testing, then it takes about two weeks for a candle to cure — that’s the blending of the wax and oils. “That’s why I have one new scent each season.”

It’s clearly enough, though: The English Teacher Candle Co. was just named the first-place winner of handmade and locally sourced goods in the 2024 Rural Intelligence Readers’ Choice Awards.