Peachyfrog is an independently owned business that specializes in hand poured 100% soy candles and cosmetics. We take pride in providing quality products & a satisfactory experience with every order.
We carry many fragrances to provide our customers with many unique choices & satisfying scents. We will continue to add additional scents to our collection as we grow, along with new products!
Please be patient as we grow and feel free to contact us to let us know your thoughts.
Our products are handcrafted in beautiful Manistee, Michigan.
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Back Story On How The Business Was Created...
The first year, winter of 2017, I was 29 years old, when I decided to sit down, get serious & come up with a plan that would work for me. I needed a way to get paid to do what I love and something that gave me the ability to use my full potential. In turn, I would be empowered to start a family and become a work at home mom, something I've been anticipating for years. After a couple of months pondering many ideas, possibilities and asking myself about my talents & skills...
That first year, I was gifted a handcrafted soy candle for Christmas. It made me think back to childhood when we would melt wax from old candles on the stove. We would use a pot of water and make a homemade tinfoil bowl to hold the wax, similar to a double boiler. A good memory along with the feelings attached to it & a great gift started it all...
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In 2018 I really started reading up on the reality of having a candle business.
Knowing that I had no past education on running a business, or how to start one. It made sense the best place to start would be in researching anything & everything I could find on starting a candle business. Some questions I asked myself included, was it really profitable enough to achieve what I'm trying to accomplish? Where would I get supplies? Could I really sell them at a price that would pay for materials, grow the business and make a living? Next step, I decided it was time to find my suppliers for materials to get a hands on feel for making candles as a business. I stocked up on wax, wicks, fragrance oil and I bought jars & lids in bulk. The first few I kept for testing, keeping a record of what materials were used, how much I used and later I would do a burn test to see how well it performed. Watching the flame, rate of consumption, burn pool, wax remaining on the side of the glass and the most important thing was how long they last. I aim to create a nice balance on all these factors creating a great clean burning candle that also smells amazing.
Also in 2018 I started working on a brand name & Logo along with finding my slogan.
Personal note: In 2018, I got engaged to my now husband and started full force into planning a do it yourself wedding, I believe in trying to work within your means and avoiding debt, I also apply this to the business as well. Even if it does take a little more time to get up and running smoothly, our focus is long term!
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It wasn't until 2019 that I actually finalized my brand name & slogan to create the Logo. In order to accomplish this myself on a low budget without hiring someone I started out with a hand drawing of my initial vision. Then to make it more professional I purchased a graphic design program & began figuring out how to use it. Starting out was not easy, again no prior experience with graphic programs and not a natural artist. Luckily for me I was able to upload my hand drawing that took a long time to create and practically trace it's outline, this program has been a life saver! It took a while to get the hang of it to accomplish the final image. I had made many hand drawn image changes, as you can see from this photo compared to our final Logo.
Let's back up to where the name came from, it actually randomly came to me as a teenager. I never understood why Peachyfrog has stuck with me, until now. Family & friends would inquire about the name Peachyfrog, it took about a month or two until it all came together. I believe everything happens for a reason, at this point in my life, unhappy at my job and realizing I didn't want to "climb the corporate latter" at the risk of losing myself and being someone I'm not. The thought of running my own business from start to finish was scary. I knew in order to have any chance at making candles into a business I would have to take a leap of faith towards achieving that kind of happiness. Regardless of any doubt or negative feedback that I would receive. When I compared that to my brand name I just knew it made sense. By the end of the year I was able to take that concept and create the full logo & slogan that you see at the top of this page.
2019 quickly became one of the busy years of my life! It started with obtaining my business license & looking into other legalities, once that was established most of the year involved creating the website which I've never done before. There was a lot of fine tuning, having to think about all the possibilities and finding some answers to questions that I had not even thought about...
Shipping was a big one to figure out, it didn't make sense to use profit to pay all shipping cost, knowing I need to reinvest that money back into the business. There's a lot of small start ups that actually end up selling themselves short right off the bat. Whether it's pricing their products too low or not including actual cost of goods and services, most of them either fail or struggle to maintain their business. On the other hand I love free shipping and wanted to be able to offer that to my customers as well.
Setting up the products on the website was another set of tasks to be done. I wanted to keep it do it yourself, in order to keep cost low I decided that whatever the photo's on the site needed to be original and unique to the business. This may be the most challenging task of setting up the website and store products.
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Personal note: On June 8th 2019, I married my spouse, May was an exceptionally busy month getting ready. On May 24th, memorial weekend, two weeks before the wedding we adopted our cat Novella at only 4 weeks old. The next thing that happen was a knock at the door, it was the sheriff telling me my father had been in a serious motorcycle accident with no helmet on. The sheriff wasn't able to tell me much other than he was airlifted and what hospital. I was the first family member informed of the accident. My brother, his wife and I had to pack our bags, I also had to inform work as I was scheduled that next day on a busy memorial weekend. I still had a wedding to plan and no father to walk me down. We just got together that day to buy his dress shoes and shirt only a few hours prior to his accident. With only 2 weeks until the wedding, canceling wasn't an option, we had people coming from out of state as far as Oregon. My dad spent about 2 months in the hospital.
Two days after getting married and hearing the good news that my dad was doing better, I was also informed that my brother and his wife we're expecting a baby! This is the first baby of the family, including in-laws, making it an extra special occasion...
Trying to make time for myself and to reflect on our wedding day was near impossible. It's taken almost 6 months and I'm glad to say, thank you cards are done and photo's have finally been printed. We also managed to get a lot of house work done before winter, not everything but some much needed tasks accomplished. I pushed myself to get as much done this year so that I can have more time & focus towards the business in the years to come!
2020 We have officially started to make progress in getting our business going. We're still learning a lot, making adjustments along the way and finding new solutions to smooth out the many bumps along the way.
This year, we're all experiencing the traumatic world wide spread of Covid-19. With everything surrounding this crisis, life has become very uncertain on many levels. One thing that hasn't changed is our commitment to you, our customers. We are taking extra precaution in keeping our products safe along with our customers. While our usual practices involve keeping a sanitary environment, we now keep hand sanitizer close by to be used before touching our products and packing up orders.
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About Independent Business Owner
Heather Krajkiewcz
I was born in Manistee, Mi on February 2nd 1988 and have spent most of my life here & consider this my hometown. Growing up here I was able to experience some of the things that make this area truly beautiful.
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This is also where I met my Husband, Peter Krajkiewcz, we got married on June 8th 2019.
Together we enjoy the outdoors including going on hiking trails, enjoying our beautiful Lake Michigan beaches, going camping & sitting around a nice relaxing campfire, taking a day to kayak the local Rivers and gardening in the summer. I have owned many animals in my life, mostly cats & dogs but also I've had aquariums in the past. We currently have 2 cats, Novella and Safari, we also have 1 dog, Khali. We do not have any children yet, it's in our plans for the future. We share a love for delicious food & cooking together. I enjoy baking & trying new Recipes in my free time. I actually made our own cake to cut & a total of 160 cupcakes for our wedding, along with many of the decorations. Which brings me to the fact that I'm a big do it yourself type of person. This includes Repairs, Remodeling & updates to our home. I am a part time Laundry Attendant who is looking to expand on my ability to work hard & to be my own boss. My desire to eventually start a family, be a work at home mom and reach my true potential has lead me on this business journey.
An adventure to discover all that was already in me and turn it into something bigger than myself.
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