Pathfinder Goods
Pathfinder Goods is my candle company, carefully capturing the scents of adventure and bringing them to life in organic, vegan, soy wax candles. These candles are hand-poured, hand-labeled, and made from start to finish by me in Denver, CO.
Getting Started
I had dabbled with print-on-demand stores in the past, and I knew that I wanted to do something more than hook up Etsy to a DTG printer. I wanted to build a brand with my hands and heart. Over Christmas in 2022, while 'home' in Lancaster, PA, my mom showed me how to make candles, and it all started to click.
I dove into designing the company before I boarded my flight back to Denver. The name, the visuals, the scents, the labels - they all started pouring out of me across Photoshop, Illustrator, and some haphazard Google sheets. By the time I'd landed back in Mountain Standard Time, I had already placed my first order with a vessel supplier and bought the domain name.
Making candles isn’t exactly rocket science. But trying to build a brand that stands out, scales, fulfills my entrepreneurial spirit and meets my customer's desires? That’s real work.
I couldn't just make candles. I had to design every part of the business.
- Brand Identity & Packaging - Logo, aesthetic, tone, product names.
- Web & E-Commerce - Built, designed, customized, and managed a Shopify storefront.
- Marketing & Content - Photography, copywriting, socials, and digital ads, all DIY.
- Supply Chain & Production - Sourced materials, managed inventory, and scaled fulfillment.
For example - instead of ordering pre-made stickers, I invested in a vinyl cutter so that I could design, print, and iterate on my own labels. That meant I could tweak typography, adjust colors, and update scent names whenever I needed. Total creative control. I’ll say this: weeding excess vinyl is a first-circle-of-hell task, but whenever someone says "I love the labels," I know I'm doing the right thing.
The process of figuring things out never really stopped. I expanded Pathfinder Goods from 4 scents to 16, introduced multiple product sizes, and was shipping orders across the US, all while handling customer experience, logistics, and design.
Then Zoom knocked on my door.
I had landed a retail placement locally in Denver, but it was pretty informal. This was different. Zoom wanted something special that'd be available to anyone who visited their online store, which was already being shopped, at minimum, by their 8000 employees. I created two custom candles, 'Happy' and 'On Mute,' while juggling my first few Maker’s Markets appearances. It was a little hectic. I was hauling inventory to the market at dawn, selling on my feet all day, and coming home to unload and pour more candles at night.
And what kind of marketer would I be if I didn't find time to film the process, edit it, and make that little YouTube video up there?
Where it stands today
Pathfinder Goods started as an experiment, but it’s become a full-scale business: one that challenges me to wear every hat imaginable. In the time since launching, I’ve built a fully branded, scalable operation from scratch. I’ve designed packaging, fine-tuned marketing strategies, and handled fulfillment logistics, all while maintaining creative control and a directly connecting with customers.
Every step has been a lesson in problem-solving and self-sufficiency. From testing new fragrance blends to troubleshooting e-commerce optimizations, I’ve learned that no detail is too small to iterate on, and no problem is too big to solve. And while the business continues to evolve, one thing hasn’t changed: if there’s something I don’t know, I’ll figure it out.
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