A candle for nerds is blowing up online, again

What do you get when you cross a candle with a history joke? Apparently, a very successful business idea.

Enter JD and Kate Industries — a small St. Louis, Missouri-based candle company, founded by husband-and-wife duo JD and Kate Dobson, with an online following and a surprisingly dry name considering its recipe for success: marrying wax with internet humor.

Since launching in 2016, the niche candles have made a habit of going viral, and it’s got demand soaring, per The New York Times. 

A bright idea

The tinned novelties are hand-poured in small batches, scented and decorated to theme, and finished with fun facts wrapped in online sensation-making wit. 

They retail on Etsy, Amazon, and the company’s website for $25 each — pricing fit for Gen Z’s “little treat” culture — and curiously, most of the bestsellers are history-themed.

• “Boston Tea Party,” a bestselling blue candle with half-submerged “wooden crates,” smells like iced tea “because that’s what it smells like when you dump 46 tons of tea into Boston Harbor during a New England winter.”
• “The War of 1812,” which features a mini wax White House, smells of woodsmoke, and works especially well since it’s based on an actual fire. (Don’t get the reference? Maybe buy the candle!) 

The popularity of nerdy candles might seem odd… 

… but they tap into a growing fascination with the past that Bloomberg says is printing money for on-trend businesses. If all that online chatter about the Roman Empire was no indication: 

• The Rest is History podcast saw 12.5m downloads a month, as of January, and is now being adapted for TV. 
• Despite a generally flat US book market, history sales are up, per Circana. In the UK, they recently hit a 25-year high, per Nielsen BookData.

The candle company’s latest hit…

… a viral “Fall of Rome” candle, has received so many orders that the couple, now full-time candlemakers/humor writers, told NYT they’re struggling to keep up with demand. Which isn’t the worst problem to have.

Candles are relatively inexpensive to produce, so makers tend to see strong profit margins — those of handmade candles, like the Dobsons’, are often 50% or more.