Iggy Box Reveal | August Maker
Welcome to your August box ‘Be as sweet as a mango…’
Meet your August maker
This month, we present to you ‘Solu’. August features friends, Emma and Steph, began crafting their collection from home workshops in Cheshire. A range born out of a passion for luxury artisan products, they are proud to support charitable causes such as ‘Mind UK’ & ‘Ollie’s Army’.
Adding style and beautiful fragrance to our homes, our chosen scent is an exclusive launch for Iggy Box subscribers! Keep an eye out for new room sprays coming soon too.
Emma and Steph plan to expand into a new workshop and also have a dream to hand Solu down to their daughters one day… Another reason why we love supporting small businesses so much!
Wicks Inside My Box
The candle
‘Mango, Lime and Lemongrass’. The last candle in our Summer collection… A stylish frosted glass vessel with a polished chrome lid houses your hand poured candle made from natural soy wax.
A refreshing zest accord with mouth-watering Indian lemongrass, Italian lemon and Thai lime, all fused with notes of fresh pineapple, melon, grapefruit and the juicy mango.
With the sun on your face… let the irresistibly sweet smells transport you to a tropical paradise. This bright and fresh scent will leave your home smelling exotic and invigorated.
The wax facts
The Little One | 200ml | 35 hr burn time | RRP £15
The Bigger One | 300ml | 50 hr burn time | RRP £20
Inside your Iggy Box this month, you’ll also find your ‘Little Something Extra’…
This month, we have partnered with Sweets in the City to bring you their mango and passionfruit sweets! Bursting with tasty tropical flavours, your sweets offer a double flavour sensation like no other and a delicious treat to be enjoyed any time and any place!
Vegan friendly, made with real fruit juice and containing no artificial colours or flavours, you can sit back and enjoy these scrumptious sweets guilt-free!
After winning BBC One’s The Apprentice in 2017, business owner Sarah has been supplying beautifully-packaged personalised gifts to sweet lovers all over the UK ever since… We hope you love them as much as we do!
Let’s learn a little more about Solu! We sat down with Emma and Steph to talk all things candles…
How long has your brand been going/ is it full time or do you do other things?
Solu has been running for roughly three years but myself and Steph took over in June 2020. Emma qualified as a physiotherapist but left the NHS last year to focus on Solu and another small business I run. Steph works part time for a chemical company alongside Solu. Long term, we would love for Solu to be their full-time job and would love to hand it down to our daughters when they are much older!
Where in the UK are you based and what space do you use for your workshop?
We are based in Cheshire and both work out of home workshops. When we took over Solu we initially converted Steph’s outside office into a workshop but quickly realised we needed more space to grow. Over Christmas, we built a workshop at Emma’s house which has allowed us to increase our productivity and also our product range. We are aiming to move into a single purpose-built workshop over the coming years.
What inspired you to start making candles? Do you have a passion that has been embedded in your brand?
They both love home fragrance and making their homes super cosy and inviting so decided to join forces and start making their own candles. They love interiors and aesthetics and as such place a lot of focus on how their products add both scent styles into a home.
What do you love about our featured scent ‘Mango, Lime and Lemongrass’?
We love that it is so different from anything else they have smelt before. We feel that the mango scents are super summery and that the lime/lemongrass notes transport you to a tropical paradise.
There are so many scents you can choose to make… How do you go about choosing for your collection?
We have completely different likes when it comes to scents. Steph favours a deeper, woodier scent, whereas I will opt for more floral, sweet scents. They aim to offer a few scents that will fit into each main scent category, so that there are one or two scents that appeal to everyone. We test our new fragrances out on friends and family and thankfully are both blessed with families who will tell us exactly what they think.
What has been your proudest moment since starting out?
We have been fortunate to be involved in “pop-ups” within two local John Lewis stores. We also consider that making thousands of candles for Iggy box has been a pretty proud moment too.
Do you have a fun fact or anecdote about your brand?
The logo was designed one slightly tipsy night in. We had been searching for the perfect logo design for a while and couldn’t quite find one that we both loved. We knew that we wanted a simple, almost handwritten, look. Steph was mocking up some logos on her phone and said “something like this…” as she scribbled out Solu. Turns out it was perfect. We hastily took a screenshot and thankfully a very lovely graphic designer friend managed to turn Steph’s writing into what you see today as the logo for Solu.
Do you have any specific ambitions or goals for Solu?
We would love to expand into a purpose-built unit to allow us to grow our customer base and product range.
Do you have any charitable or environmental partnerships we should know about to share?
Over the last year, they have raised money for MIND and also for a local charity called Ollie’s Army which raises money for two siblings, Ollie and Amelia who were sadly born with Batten’s Disease.
Is there anything that you believe makes your brand different or stand out?
We aim to offer luxury fragrance in a clean and sustainable way. We use sustainably sourced soy wax for their candles and wax melts. We use glass bottles (rather than plastic) for the diffusers, soaps and soon to be room sprays and we offer refill options too.
Are there any plans for new products or news over the next few months?
We are currently in the process of adding room sprays in all scents to our range. We also have another new scent coming in the Autumn which is just beautiful.
So there you have it, our August reveal. We are absolutely thrilled to have collaborated with such wonderful people, who both share our passion for supporting self care and MIND. We hope you love this box just as much as we do and that we leave your home smelling exotic and invigorated!
Happy burning, Iggy Boxers!
