Heidi Cook and Robin Nelson living their dream by creating
candles to ease the body and soul
By Erin Cooper, Special to the Dispatch
Gilroy – Two sisters developed a way to ease the mind, body and soul, and in doing so are living their dream.
Heidi Cook and her sister Robin Nelson started a scented candle-making business that they named Kokoro, which translated from Japanese means mind, body and soul.
“Having my own business has always been a dream of mine; I just didn’t know what it would be,” Kokoro founder Cook said. “Sometimes you just have to wait until you get to a certain part in your life and then all of a sudden it just kind of comes to you.”
The idea of creating the candles began a year ago in the midst of Maui vacation.
“I was sitting there in Maui watching all these entrepreneurs before me,” Cook said. “It was truly inspirational and I thought … there’s got to be something out there that I can do and that I can enjoy.”
When Cook returned home she immediately told her sister Robin Nelson the idea.
The idea soon turned into a reality as the two sisters worked on creating a candle that was completely natural.
Kokoro candles are different than your ordinary candle. They are hand poured, hand packaged, and produced with soybean-based vegetable wax. Most common candles are created with paraffin wax, a bi-product of gasoline refining.
“After doing a lot of research and discovering that paraffin was used in majority of the candles, we wanted to create our candles with soybean wax,” said Cook, who moved to Gilroy in 1997 after her mother, father and sister all relocated from San Jose where the two sisters were born and raised. “I was so shocked when I discovered soybean wax is created in the United States and yet many companies are still making their candles with paraffin.”
The soy wax used in Kokoro candles can burn up to 30 percent longer than candles produced with paraffin wax and they leave no petroleum soot emissions.
Candle creation
The melting of wax and pouring takes places at Nelson’s house, using a huge pot. The first part of the wax is poured into a glass candle holder and then cooled until the next layer of hot wax is poured.
If a candle doesn’t come out perfect then it is normally just given away or used around the house.
The next step is to create appealing packaging that catches the consumer’s eye.
After countless hours of research the sisters decided to take their idea to Cook’s former neighbor Katherine Filice, the principle designer and owner of Articulate Solutions, a company designed to help businesses with communication and design strategies.
She found the right packaging. The boxes were iridescent silver with different jewel-tone colored papers placed around the boxes.
“My original thought was to use two tones of browns for my packaging but when I saw the packaging I said, ‘Wow … that’s it!'” Cook said.
“Every seal shows there is something different in each box,” Filice said. “Everything is done by hand I think people pick up on that, a lot of the time you don’t see the layers of effort that these boxes show.”
Once they chose the packaging they needed to create names for the five original scents. They went through a thousand names trying to create something different. The concluding brainstorming ended in these five scents: Beach House, Invitation, Third Date, Front Porch, and An Ordinary Day.
When the names were finalized they decided to conduct a small launch a week before Christmas at Blush Boutique, one of Filice’s clients. Located in Morgan Hill, the sophisticated and classy boutique seemed to be the perfect place to launch Kokoro … and they were right.
“It has all worked out so perfect, I know this is what I wanted to always do,” Cook said. “I hope others will burn our candles and be inspired to go after their dreams.”
A simple dream of two sisters turned into a reality right before their eyes. A little more than a month after being introduce to the public the product itself has blossomed.
“The skies the limit … what the heck … a girl can dream,” Cook said.
Kokoro Candles is online – readers can learn more about the company and candles as well as purchase them through the Web site. The address is www.kokorocandles.com.
