Melt it

You’re pacing through your doings, you come across a particular scent and off your mind drifts to a childhood memory, to when you were at home embracing your loved ones or to when you really enjoyed that romantic dinner. Memories are there to cherish and Melt it are making them scented! And they’re doing so in a very innovative way such as the scoopable wax jars, whereby instead of putting the usual melts onto your burner, you can scoop out a teaspoon of soft wax… just like jam! Life on Point reached to Elken and Abigail to explore their startup concept.

Tell us about your idea, your vision and your dream… What inspired you to develop your idea?

Abigail: I have been researching and testing wax products for a good number of years, looking into different wax compounds, colours, fragrances. First “customers” were myself, my family and closest friends, with all feedback (in any form) welcomed in order to constantly improve the “recipes”. I always loved the idea of giving that warm feeling and making your home smell nice. When my husband and I met, it was then a match made in heaven.

Elken: I love food, like to test new recipes, smells, and colours. Though of course it’s not the same thing with wax products, as you can’t really taste what you’re producing (though sometimes the smell really tempts you to), there are still similarities in the process. So I started to also get involved in what Abigail was creating.

Why did you decide to become a business owner?

At the start of 2021, after realising that we did achieve a good “recipe” for the different products, we decided to form Melt it and launch our products to the general public. Everyone’s senses are stimulated differently by different scents, hence what we are after is really to create “scented memories.” We want also to provide innovative products, like our scoopable wax jars, whereby instead of putting the usual melts onto your burner, you can scoop out a teaspoon of soft wax (just like jam).

How does the start-up help you accomplish your life’s goals?

Both of us work full-time in jobs that have nothing to do with wax products or any other form of handmade production. Melt it, helps us to dedicate our spare time together, pushes us to explore other skills (we built and maintain our website, take photos, source out materials, etc..). Seeing a new item develop from some scribble on a paper to being finally packaged and ready to be sold, gives you a sense of fulfilment. All our products are handmade, hence we are really proud of what we manage to create.

How much time do you spend working on your business each day?

Having other full-time jobs, we dedicate evenings and weekends to our business. Of course it’s not every single eve or weekend, though during (or rather before) specific seasonal periods like Christmas, Valentine’s & Mothers’ day etc., work load increases.

What has been your most satisfying moment in business so far?

First of all, it was the actual launch itself. We launched Melt it last April just in time for Mothers’ day, and we were positively surprised with the feedback (and of course sales) received. We actually depleted all the stock that we had available and had to go again into production mode after a couple of days. This gave us the much needed moral boost during the early days.

Why did you decide to become a business owner?

A lot of people dream of having a business, we were no different. However we wanted to have something that could match our passion, rather than just open any business. Melt it manages to tick both aspects by combining our passion into a business.

What does success mean to you?

To us, having repeat customers that purchase again our products for themselves or coming to us when they are shopping for gifts, is in itself a success. If one day, we manage to make this our full-time job, then it would be the ultimate success, but that is not a priority. Receiving back a “thank you it smells divine” message or a “wow my mum really loved it” is very rewarding.

What is your greatest fear, and how do you manage fear?

Our greatest fear is losing our loved ones. It is something that unfortunately is inevitable. Hence we try to as much as possible remain in touch and spend time with them, though these last 18months have been quite a struggle due to the covid situation. With anything in life, the most important thing is to do your utmost so as to have as little regrets possible.

Looking back at your entrepreneurial journey so far, if you could do one thing differently, what would it be?

Start earlier. The older you get, the more you have at stake, especially from a career perspective, hence you might stay away from making some decisions which would have been easier at a younger age.

What would you consider to be the biggest challenges for aspiring entrepreneurs in your industry?

One of the biggest challenges is the procurement of anything required to produce the final product. Malta is a very small country where most of the stuff is to be imported. We source most of our material from abroad from different suppliers. Being a startup, economies of scale are against you, which makes it then even tougher to keep a good balance between the final retail price and your margin. How do you see yourself in two years time? How do you foresee your growth path? The idea would be to open our own shop as this can take our business to the next level. At the moment, we do everything online, from our home, hence losing on the walk-in business element, which given the nature of the product is very important. By that time, we should also have, hopefully, an extra little helper, as we are expecting our baby boy to arrive in January :)