For scented candles, it’s no secret that odor and aroma are critical to the user experience. At Aryballe’s Digital Olfaction Summit in the fall of 2022, we had the pleasure of hearing from Jeremiah Bechtold, Process Chemist at Antique Candle Company. He shared insights into his company’s innovative work with Aryballe and how it helps inform Antique Candle Company’s scent defining process. One of Jeremiah’s primary roles at Antique Candle Company is monitoring the production quality involving scent and the testing of new and existing products. Using Aryballe’s digital olfaction technology, Jeremiah is able to help optimize candle production and avoid potential issues that could lead to a poor user experience.
But before we dive further into this use case, let’s learn a little more about Antique Candle Company and how this partnership all started.
What is Antique Candle Company?
Antique Candle Company was founded in 2014 by Brittany Whitenack in Lafayette, Indiana. Since then, the team has grown to approximately 50 employees. Primarily an e-commerce business, Antique Candle Company provides high quality, farmhouse-inspired, artisan soy candles. The company’s mission is to create a welcoming and engaging community with their customers, and to make a positive impact in the world through their candles. Check out some of their delicious scents here!
When did Antique Candle Company begin working with Aryballe?
This past year, Antique Candle Company onboarded Aryablle’s NeOse Advance product to aid its quality control department. While the candle company previously relied on sensory panels for fragrance testing, they needed more objective measurements that could be coupled with the panelists’ insights for enhanced quality assurance testing. Now, they are able to more confidently test fragrance strength, quality and consistency.
Leveraging Digital Olfaction for Quality Assurance before Production
The company offers a wide variety of fragrances that vary by season and market trends and rotates in three new fragrances every year. With various fragrances going in and out of season, they use Aryballe’s technology to check the quality of new raw materials and oils against existing fragrance signatures before they go into production. This helps ensure these ingredients are stable and uncontaminated before being incorporated into the candles.
This same process can be applied to modified oil recipes due to customer feedback or quality concerns. For instance, last year, Antique Candle Company worked to change its fragrance recipe for its peppermint candles as some were unexpectedly turning blue. Using Aryballe, the company was able to test the modified oil against the original oil before it went back into production to confirm the fragrance profile was as strong and accurate. With these results, they felt confident that the new peppermint candle recipe would give customers a consistent fragrance experience while also being able to address the discoloration that some encountered.
How NeOse Advance Improves Quality Assurance in Finished Candle Products
In addition to pre-production quality control, Aryballe helps Antique Candle Company provide quality assurance in its finished candle products. This is key when it comes to processes such as identifying sources of contamination in the production process and evaluating the shelf-life of finished goods.
For example, Antique Candle Company recently launched a new coffee fragrance called fresh roasted coffee. While very popular, the scent was also very potent and began to contaminate other candle’s fragrances that were manufactured using the same machinery, despite following normal equipment cleaning protocols. Using Aryballe, the company was able to determine the adequate equipment setting to purge their machines of the fresh roasted coffee oil so that future batches of other fragrances were not contaminated.
When it comes to evaluating the shelf-life of finished goods, Antique Candle Company also means business. It has a one-year candle guarantee, so it is driven to ensure that its candle’s fragrance remains consistent in throw, intensity, and strength over the entire time period (and ideally beyond). Using Aryballe, the company can compare older candle’s measurements against those of a new candle to ensure a consistent and accurate fragrance profile, even at twelve months.
To read more about Aryballe’s work with Antique Candle Company, click here.
