Rathborne Candles planning to burn bright overseas

Rathborne Candles, the oldest candle-maker in the world, is leaning on its 500-year history and unique connection with Ireland as its tool to expand internationally.

“As far as we’re aware, we’re the oldest manufacturing company still in existence,” said Vincent Brady, managing director of Rathborne. That heritage factor is its main appeal in foreign markets, particularly the US.

“It’s the market that we feel will be the biggest for us one for us, maybe within the next five years,” said Brady. “It’s kind of nice, the fact that we are older than America. Colombus discovered America in 1492 and we date from 1488 – we’ve got that four-year head start, so that’s quite unique.”

Probably the biggest challenge has been the increasing cost of manufacturing and ingredients

Other unique tidbits from the company’s history are its winning of the contract to supply Dublin’s city streets with lighting in the 1700s, and being commissioned by the state to provide a candle for every home in the country at the turn of the millennium.

But despite the solid growth the company has experienced over the last few years to bring it to a €3 million turnover business, Rathborne has faced quite a few trials.

“Probably the biggest challenge has been the increasing cost of manufacturing and ingredients,” said Brady.

“One of our natural waxes that we use, one of its main components is sunflower, and I never realised that Ukraine was the biggest manufacturer of sunflower in the world.”

Prices of the vital ingredient spiked after Russia’s invasion, and Rathborne had to absorb that cost.

Irish support has been the backbone of the company up to now, and Brady is hugely grateful, but emphasised that we’re a small market, internationally speaking.

Targeting new markets

To fuel further expansion, Brady is targeting new markets like South Korea, and continued growth in key markets of the US, UK and Japan, with the latter being their second-largest market.

“We started with Japan about four or five years ago and it was an interesting challenge for us because their quality standards are really high, so every candle gets inspected before they send it out,” said Brady.

He said the success of the Japanese market has opened the door to more opportunities for Rathborne in South Korea.

“Once they hear we’re in Japan, these guys go, ‘you know what you’re doing’,” he said.

On top of their international expansion into bricks and mortar outlets, the online business has proven to be a great way to increase sales, especially in the run up to Christmas, but Brady said their online trade suffers from some unique challenges when selling candles.

“Candles are a strange product, because trying to sell them to someone online is difficult because you can’t smell them and you can’t touch them,” he said.

To better physically connect his products with people, Brady is looking forward to the Enterprise Ireland Showcase Ireland event in the RDS in Dublin, from January 21 to 23.

The support from the state body has been “absolutely amazing” so far, and he’s excited at the prospect of meeting like-minded sellers and customers there.

Relying on the church

“One of the challenges when I took over here in 2003 was that we were effectively relying on the church for our continued existence,” Brady said.

“The little lights you might buy for a [church] offering, we make about 20 million of those a year. We said look, we’re candle-makers.

“We’ve got lots of experience. We’ve got history. That gives us a lot of credibility and we should be in the scented candle arena.”

The scented candle range was launched five years ago and now makes up roughly half of the overall revenue for the business.

It is this luxury line of products, including scented candles, room diffusers and lotions, that will fuel growth in international markets.

This expansion, Brady predicts, will bring the company to a €5 million turnover business in the next few years, and will add 8 to 10 staff to their existing roster of 20.

He said that throughout the company’s plans, quality and home-grown Irishness will pervade everything they do.

“We keep trying to shine that light, and we’ve been doing it longer than anyone else has,” Brady said.

“Candles are synonymous with all our lives really. We’re christened with a candle. We get married with a candle. When you die, there’s a candle. All these big ceremonies in our lives, candles are there.”

This article was produced in partnership with Enterprise Ireland.