DISPATCHES

Within my latest Dispatches blog, I reflect on some recent changes at Farmer's Son Co. and how they’ve brought both excitement and uncertainty. From signs that remind me to keep going, to new directions for the business, it’s all about trusting the process. As we head into the holiday season, I’m embracing the small wins and looking forward to what’s ahead.

We’ve decided to part ways with a long-time stockist as our values and business needs evolved. While this shift brings challenges, our commitment to our craft and bringing cozy, beautiful moments to your spaces remains unwavering.

Standing up for what we believe in ensures we continue working with partners who truly support our mission. Thank you for being a part of this journey and for your continued support as we focus on what truly matters: creating products that bring warmth and joy to your life.

If you’ve been by the shoppe or pursued the website enough, you’ll have probably seen my small selection of charcoal incense cones. 

They're kind of the best.

I love them so much & I know that those who’ve had the opportunity to try them out have also enjoyed. They’re perfect for those nights you when you get home late from work and don’t have the time to light up a pile of candles before company arrives, those times where it's smelling a bit too green (I think we know what I'm talking about here) or like whatever you made for dinner last night (nobody likes the smell of salmon the next morning) or those moments where you just want that instant gratification of a space that’s beautifully fragranced. 

Personally I love taking them up out the cabin - when we’re opening things up and want to eliminate the stale, slightly musty smell. They're also great for when it’s too warm inside to light any candles and for those times where it’s a rainy day and we’re stuck inside with a pile of stinky dogs.

I’ve been trying to get my line of incense cones off the ground for years now & it’s that project where I’m just too damn stubborn to quit trying or to walk away from the work that we’ve put into them. 

While they’re in the shoppe and online, I haven’t been able to roll them out to our stockist partners or even promote them as I haven’t been able to find the unscented charcoal cones that need to produce them. We buy raw, fragrance free cones in bulk and then hand dip and cure in our exclusive Farmer's Son Co. fragrance blends.

There have been a pile of starts and stops as suppliers have closed or switched their offerings to only sell pre-dipped cones which has all been a bit of a thorn in my side. 

As we were running out of cones earlier this year, I thought my problems were solved when I'd finally found a new manufacturer overseas who said they’d be able to produce our raw cones to spec.

Amazing.

So we sent in our order, made a wire transfer and then received regular updates via email and phone about our order until our order was scheduled to arrive.

In place of a couple of gigantic boxes filled to the brim with enough materials to last me the year, I ended up with an envelope with 25 cones.

25 little cones. That's it. That's all.

They looked great, but basically I ended up getting taken for a ride and scammed out of my time, energy and the value of our purchase order.

I’ve never had this happen my 15 years of buying, sourcing and product development. I generally know my shit. It’s what I’ve done professionally since I was 23 and while not perfect, I like to think that I'm pretty good at what I do.

I know how to find manufacturers and trading partners around the world - understanding how to vet them. The questions to ask and how to go about finding their credentials. Ordering samples, understanding quality and what it takes to bring an idea to life. 

So, this hasn’t been a great feeling. 

Dozens of late night phone calls and emails. Lots of false promises and then just a pile of nothing. 

It’s not a pile of money, but it’s enough of a hit that it's just really disappointing and leaves me without those funds to invest in new ideas. 

I’ve bootstrapped this little brand from the very beginning, investing my own funds as I had them and have always been very careful with my resources. Trying to ensure that whether I’m investing my funds or I’m trying to collect money, that everything is accounted. Even if that’s meant driving two hours to collect a couple hundred bucks owed by a (now former) store who'd ghosted and refused to answer calls, emails or DMs. It’s the principal of it all.

But I'm persistent.

That and I'm sitting on thousands of little incense tins that I designed and had crafted this past year in anticipation of a wider role out and bigger mission. I could offer them as tins for pre-rolls, but that's pushing it. Not that you can't use them for that once you've finished your batch of cones...

So it’s been back to the drawing board and I’ve now just placed an order with my fifth supplier.

Conversations have been had. Investigations have into the supplier's background have gone well. An order has been placed and and everything has finally gone into production, for real I hope. All to eventually make their way to my lab where we’ll dip and cure each cone, before counting out and placing in our little green tins, readying them to ship out to you and our stockist partners.

Sometimes things are an adventure. Sometimes a project or an idea comes together quickly. Sometimes it’s four years of development, a pile of testing and a few more gray whiskers in the beard.

Either way, I just keep rolling. These cones are too dang good to give up on. That and I'm just too dang stubborn.

I'll keep posted & let you know this all comes together.

Cheers,
Dan

Over the past few years, I’ve offered a small selection of beans on both my website and in our physical space, but other than saying “hey, coffee and candles really go together” I never really took the time to explain that this an actual love of mine that I really enjoy discussing and sharing it with others.

Curious to know my coffee story and how we're bringing my love of good coffee to Farmer's Son Co., then dive in. About a five to eight minute read.

Hi friend,

I hope September’s treating you well and that you’re finding your groove as we put another summer to sleep and settle in for a new season ahead.

I’m still having trouble believing that we’re already three weeks into the month, but what are you going to do?

This time of year, things start to pickup for us. While folks like to enjoy our candles throughout the year, autumn the coming winter are where we find ourselves the busiest. With come that comes a pile of candles to be poured, planning, projects, coordinating.

Sometimes it kind of feels like we’re putting together a puzzle. Some pieces of the puzzle arrive quickly, others slowly (oh so slowly). Sometimes you didn’t know you needed another puzzle piece or forgot about a piece you had.

And then you start building, doing so without the picture on the puzzle box to guide you. You’ve got an idea of what the end result is going to hopefully look like, some memories from the last time you did a puzzle called “MAKING IT THROUGH THE HOLIDAYS IN ONE PIECE” but you’re kind of just winging in, figuring it out as it comes together.

Sometimes pieces come together easily. Sometimes there’s a bit of jamming, but eventually you get there.

Slowly my team and I have been finding our puzzle pieces and putting them together.

I thought it’d be fun for 02. DISPATCHES to tell you about how this season’s puzzle is coming together.

With each autumn and holiday season, I find myself having to do a bit more coordinating. The planning and puzzle piece hunting starts earlier and earlier in the year. Throw in stuff coming from six countries (Canada, USA, Mexico, China, India and Nepal) and things can get interesting.

We usually stop pouring autumn candles in the middle of October, with the focus shifting to making sure everything’s ready for the holiday season. I think we’re in good shape. Well, kind of. A rush order of fragrance went in yesterday and should be here by Friday. With so many fragrances and different notes used, suddenly you can find yourself walking into the fragrance room and saying, “oh shit. Looks like we’re out of everything we need to do our next round of production. Better get on that.”

I haven’t always gotten it right. Not even close. Growing the past few years from a tiny solopreneur operation to a full-fledged lab & creative studio hasn’t come without its own growing pains, bottlenecks, supply chain issues, pandemic fun and “Dan, you said you were going to order that stuff. Did you?”

But, in the same breath it’s been fun to grab my imaginary trench coat and magnifying glass, as I look for all the piece that makeup the puzzle that is #candleseason for us.

I’m really excited with where my team and I are at. There’s a pile of new fun on the go and treasures that have just arrived. You know I’m that guy that looks up from his desk anytime a courier truck drives by.

All holiday artwork is on the way. Earlier this year I started working with two new printers who I love. It’s all about the details for me & I wasn’t happy with the quality of the labels that we were using. It’s all about continuous improvement and tweaking around here and the new linen texture paper that we’ve selected just looks and feels like a million bucks. I want everything we make to look as good as it smells.

This holiday season we’ve got seven fragrances in our core winter lineup, including two new ones – Cypress + Mint along with Evergreen. Both launching ahead of November 1^st! All seven fragrances will be in our 8oz tumblers, along with 4oz mini jars – another shakeup.

I decided to phase out the little tins. Sometimes I just get bored. That and they were a pain to label. Half the time my label applicating machine didn’t work with them, so it even last season I found myself sitting in the lab at 3 AM watching Murder She Wrote while hand-applying Forest Frost labels.

That and the jars just look nicer (those tins served their purpose but like, meh). With a bigger surface area on each jar, I was able to design a new label that really lets me tell you the top, middle and base notes of each scent. Something I’ve wanted to do for years.

I’d originally hoped to hunt down some cute reusable tins that I could emboss with fun looking graphics, but it just wasn’t in the cards. We’re a growing studio, but we’re still tiny enough that sometimes folks won’t give you their attention when you approach them about custom fabricating something. There was a lot of sweettalking to get our incense tins, it’s didn’t go so well with this latest idea. Maybe someday.

I think we’ve got most of what we need for fragrance to get us through the holidays in-stock or on the way. If you had to ask me off the top of my head how many notes we’re using, I don’t think I could tell you. Lots. We’ve had some fun exploring and trying new things. Looking at ideas that on surface might not feel really Farmer’s Son Co., but that’s the point. It’s important to shake it up & draw from new inspiration.

What else can I tell you.

I think we’re doing okay after the great wick shortage of 2021. A key supplier of bulk candlewicks in the industry (like talk about a niche business?) closed for awhile and experienced a pile of supply issues that everyone making candles professionally felt. There were a lot of late nights searching online and making calls to everyone to find enough wicks to get us through the season.

Same goes with glassware. At what felt like the eleventh-hour last year I managed to get three pallets of our tumblers in. Sometimes you just need to trust in the process and hope it works out. On that note, I need to make sure I get another pallet of tumblers on the way. We tear through them – especially when doing big pours of classics like Mulled and Forest Frost.

We’ve also got our new recycled blown glassware from Mexico to play with! It arrived earlier this month and has been flying out the door. I figured I’d launch it first as barware (so many folks kept asking) and then let the collection of fragrances follow.

Let me tell yah. It’s going to be good.

When I started thinking about the look and feel of the glass, I knew I wanted to shift gears a bit. Make that a lot. Which is the brief I gave my team. The vibe is dirty / sexy / mood / late nights / whisper tones / long drawn-out conversations / heavy / a half empty wine bottle / incense / the crackling sound of a record player. You know where I’m going.

It’s coming together. I’m hoping for November. I should probably make sure I order the right size boxes this time.

Bags, boxes and ribbon are looking good. Talked to the bro-in-law about getting another couple of workstations built (I never thought we’d run out of counterspace).

I’m also anxiously awaiting the departure of our 2022 holiday range from our partner in Nepal. I’m going to introduce you to our workshop and the range soon, but, dang, if this range isn’t just the cutest. We weren’t even through last holiday season when I started working on it, knowing we’d set the bar high with those goofy bells. Man I love those bells. We were able to get our paws on a few more for this season (sadly no 4pc hanging set)…but still some good stuff.

And then there’s our new brassware that’s being enjoyed and the new coffee range I just ordered.

Last but not least, it’s time to figure out the flow and layout of our physical space outside the lab. Our studio couch went into storage and fixturing is starting to roll in. I’m not opening a store. I said I’d never open a store…an experience though…I do love a good experience.

I'll share what I'm thinking soon enough.

With that, I’ve just realized I need to do a rush order for more candle bags. I should probably go figure that out...

More DISPATCHES to come.

Cheers,
Dan