About the business: Smell of Love Candles is a vegan-soy candle business created by now-12-year-old “kidpreneur” Alejandro Buxton and his mom, Patricia Buxton. What started in September 2020 as a small operation out of their Vienna kitchen is now a multiemployee company with a new presence at Tysons Corner Center — with plans to open a store of its own.
How it started: Alejandro loves to read, play with Legos — standard kid stuff. But he also caught the family’s entrepreneurial bug.
In 2019, at 9 years old, he wanted to make healthier candles than the ones they had at home. “Jurassic Orange” was the first. His mom suggested there could be a business here.
But she didn’t just hand over the startup capital.
“I made him pitch to myself and my mom,” Patricia, an attorney by trade, said. “He started with $500. It’s been a lot of reinvesting, and I’ve tapped into my own personal savings. I keep telling him, it’s a loan with no interest. It’s for his future.”
Smell of Love uses only phthalate-free fragrances, premium oils and reusable jars and tins. Its scents are tested literally in-house.
“We don’t sell it unless we test it in our own house,” Alejandro, the company’s CEO, said. “Our house smells amazing.”
The business was online only to start before the Buxtons ventured out to farmers and holiday markets, most notably D.C.’s holiday market, when Smell of Love was visited by Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, providing the business a nice boost of publicity.
As Smell of Love Candles has grown, Alejandro has taken on a greater role outside of production, learning the financial ins and outs.
“I want him to learn the back end. There are really a lot of lessons that can help with life,” Patricia said. “I know he’s really still too young, I’ve seen a change in how he manages his own money too.”
The challenge today: Smell of Love opened a kiosk at Tysons Corner Center earlier this month, with space in the back of the mall to make the candles. But the kiosk must be staffed — it’s open all day, including the hours during which Alejandro is in school.
In addition to the CEO, his younger sister, Valentina, and Patricia, Smell of Love employs a three-person production team. They need two more people, and it’s been a struggle.
“I’ve seen many other businesses face the same thing,” Alejandro said.
A second challenge is space. While Tysons has provided an area to produce the candles, Smell of Love can’t have its materials delivered to the mall. Everything is still delivered to the home and trucked over. It’s a lot — the family has made 12,000 candles, in 26 scents, in just a couple of years.
What’s next: Alejandro is not thinking small.
“We see our candles in every single household, bringing joy to every single family,” he said.
But that grand goal will start with a single store, somewhere in Northern Virginia — likely one with accessible warehouse space.
“We’re shopping around where it could be conducive to our budget,” Patricia said.
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