Curiosity Got The Best Of Us & What We Learned Was Shocking . .

Hello & Welcome, I'm Teresa Schumacher and this is my wonderful, husband Jeffrey, and our adorable son Christian. Christian was one at the time this picture was taken. He is 4 now. We also have an adorable 9 month old baby boy, Joshua! We are so thankful and blessed with our family and our soy candle business. Owning a business is a lot, I mean a lot of hard work but oh so rewarding. The funny thing is, we were not interested in building a soy candle business. That was never initially our interest. Our candle journey was ignited by our common passion for health and wellness.

My husband and I have always enjoyed relaxing with scented candles. We burned many high quality, name brand candles. We became curious as to why our candle jars turned black and why we saw black smoke trickling from the wicks. Then we began to notice a layer of black dust on our T.V. and in our stereo system. At that point we realized, not only was this black film on our candle jars but it also must be in the air we are breathing. We wondered what it was and if it was harmful.

Our curiosity motivated us to research the health aspects of candles. What we found out was shocking!

We learned that most candles are made from paraffin wax, which is a refined gasoline, a petroleum by-product. To learn more about paraffin wax, we received a report from the Environmental Protection Agency. The report stated that paraffin wax is harmful when burned, as bad as second-hand smoke, and contains 11 toxins, two that are considered above the excess cancer risk with multiple exposures.

We were astonished. In addition we learned that most commercially made fragrances were almost as harmful as the paraffin wax because the fragrances were made with petroleum oil. We also learned about the metals used in wicks and an entire host of synthetic additives, commonly used. These synthetic additives add to the toxicity of candles.

Frustrated With Candles, We Developed Extraordinarily Scented Soy Candles Just For Ourselves & . .

The unhealthy paraffin based fragrances led us to utilize soy bean oil fragrances. We believe we were one of the first to use soy bean oil fragrances. And to this day we don't know of any other candle manufacturers who are willing to expend the extra money to use healthier fragrances. We also use 100% cotton wicks.

let's get back to our story . . .

To say the least, we were very frustrated with the candles that were currently on the market. Besides being unhealthy, they often had little or no aroma. The candle wax burned uneven, leaving a big hole down the center. Most often big chunks of wax were left on the side of the jar and the wicks often got buried in the wax.

We loved burning candles and were not ready to give up that pleasure, but we were also not going to put our health in jeopardy. We were convinced that there had to be a way to make a healthier candle.

We learned that in 1998, students at Purdue University invented Soy Wax. Soy wax has no harmful carcinogens, burns with no petro-carbon soot and lasts longer than paraffin wax.

We then began the long adventure of learning about candle making with soy wax. Trying different formulations of soy wax, we ended up developing our own unique soy formulation for our extraordinary scented soy candles.

First Candles Horrible, But then . . .

I finally made my first Soy Candles. How hard can it be, right. Melt and pour. Well, they looked beautiful but burned uneven and had hardly any scent. I was about to learn that there was much, much more involved to making a highly scented, great performing candle.

So, out of this desire to make a healthier candle, emerged candles that are not only healthy, but are scented above and beyond the best of scented candles!

These candles are amazing, we thought. They burned clean and evenly, they are healthy and WOW what a scent. The scent is incredible, lasting from the very top to the very bottom.

My husband brought them to work as a little "test run" and his co-workers loved them. Friends and family loved them and everyone seemed to want more. At this point my husband thought this would be a fun little side business for me to enjoy and bring in some extra money.

People Where Amazed At The Crowd Around This Little Stand & . .

During my prayer time in December 2001, I was inspired to call some of the local malls to rent space to sell the candles we had made before Christmas. All the malls were way too expensive, except the Summit Park Mall. We were able to rent a space for a fantastic rate for the last 2 weeks before Christmas. This mall was a dying mall with a lot of "mall walkers" but little, what we call "retail traffic". The mall itself was beautiful and it was so exciting to have our own little store. 

As we began to set up, no exaggeration people starting coming from everywhere, smelling and buying our candles. Our candles are so strong, as we pushed the dolly loaded with our candles through the doors, workers from the other stores, mall walkers and guest of the mall were so enticed by our beautifully fragrant candles they had to come over. Frequent shoppers of the mall would tell us the had never seen anything quite like this. The mall is always very quite and low key even during the big Christmas rush.

We were selling an extraordinary amount of candles per day. We had a hard time keeping up.  It was just the two of us. No employees at this time and we were making them at night in our kitchen and inventorying them in our basement. Everyone was amazed at our success, including ourselves and even our parents. My husband then began to take this more seriously. We began to see the markings of a successful business. Who knew - that making candles in our small kitchen would turn into to making candles in a full fledge factory, with 2 retail stores and employing over 25 employess and wholesaling all through our the United States! Here is what happened next . . .

The next month was our wedding, January 19th, 2001 and we gave out our candles as wedding favors. When we got back from our honeymoon our answering machine was packed with messages regarding how to get more candles and who made them. One of those messages was our very first wholesale client - The very high end and luxurious, Capello's Salon & Day Spa's in Williamsville, N.Y.

Now it is, February 2001 and for Valentines day we decide to rent a small space at the Boulevard mall called a kiosk, which is still there today, 5 years later! This was another huge success. At that time I was pregnant and I had to leave the mall temporarily. But we were back in the mall again 2 months later and never left again. Everyone loved our candles, and our customers were so happy to see us back. This happened at the perfect time, as the fortune 500 company my husband worked for laid off a substantial number of employees in the New York area, Jeff being one of them. So, little did we know this little business was to become our main income.

Another successful venture was the Erie County Fair in August 2001. WOW, we did and still do an incredible amount of business there. We won’t give out our numbers, but let’s just say the people we did tell were in shock!  Vendors at the fair to this day are still amazed at the crowds are soy candles bring in; they had never seen anything like it. People actually came back into the fair just to buy more of our candles.  We are told we are one of the top producing vendors for that show every year! We are very thankful for the opportunity to be part of the Erie county Fair year after year.

January 2002 we designed and optimized our first website. It started just as a place for our local customers to refer there friends and family who lived out of state to buy our soy candles. Then we began to show up in all the search engines for specific keywords and now this little website brings in as much income as our local retail stores.

So How Do We do it?  

Well, we developed a couple of exclusive techniques that know other candle manufacturers know about. Of course we are not going to give away our secrets, but we will give you a brief overview of how Pure Integrity Candles have come to be so great . . .

Our "Innovative Fragrance Technology", includes our unique "7 Step Pouring Process" and our exclusive "Intelliscent Fragrances". The latest innovation in candle making! The combination of these techniques enables our soy wax to absorb an exceptionally greater amount of scent.  We hand - pour all of our candles.

 Our unique "Intelliscents Fragrances"! Our "Intelliscents" were developed specifically for us to be used in our unique soy wax formulation. Typical fragrances are manufactured in petroleum oil, yuck! Harmful and not so strong. Pure Integrity's fragrances are manufactured in soy Bean Oil and all I can say is WOW - you can smell the difference! Pure Integrity "Intelliscents" smell sooooooooo good. Our soy bean oil fragrances are so strong, so realistic they will leave you wanting more and more!

There is not a better smelling, better performing, candle out their - Once you’ve burned Pure Integrity Candles, you just won't want to burn anything else.

The Future Is Bright With Pure Integrity Candles!

Currently in 2007 . . . . we have 2 beautiful retail locations in the prominent, area malls in Buffalo, N.Y., as well as an extensive list of high-end salon/spa's in Buffalo. We have wholesale and fundraising accounts throughout the United States. We receive wholesale requests on a daily basis through our website!

What is in the future . . .we hope to add an exclusive line of spa candles and soy melts. We will continue adding additional scents to our current candle line and to offer a variety of contemporary candle accessories.

From this point on it has been one success after another. Challenges arise every now and then but you see when you seek GOD daily for guidance, as his word says, he will direct your path. His direction has saved us many times, because he sees things that we don't, what might look great, may really be trouble and vice/versa. He showers us with his blessings and his favor is upon us as we put him first and seek to do his will!

So, there you have it, our story!

We are told over and over again, our candles are truly the best scented candles around. We know they are, and are very thankful and excited for what the future holds.