Local candlemaker aims to share Aspen’s light with the world
Sam Ferguson/Courtesy photo
In 2018, Erica Collins decided to leave her big city, Washington D.C. life and take a chance on moving to Aspen, so she could be closer to her two brothers. She didn’t know it then, but the global COVID-19 epidemic and love of candles would change the course of her professional life.
“I was tired of the hustle and bustle of city life and wanted to be closer to my family,” she said. “And then COVID hit, and I was stuck in a studio apartment in downtown Aspen with my dog Nakoa and realized I was burning a lot of candles, and that it was going to become very expensive. So I ordered a starter candle-making kit from Amazon and started playing around with it.”
She said her love of luxury candles and too much free time on her hands led her to research candle- and scent-making where she learned that many candles on the market used toxic ingredients that aren’t great for humans and animals. So she set out to make a cleaner alternative.
“A lot of candles on the market contain phthalates and other carcinogens like acetone, benzene, and toluene,” she said. “They also use paraffin wax (which is petroleum-based) because it gives the candle a smooth appearance, but I didn’t want to support the oil industry; so I used soy wax, which is a hard wax to work with and to get the candle to look a certain way.”
At the start, Collins was just candlemaking as a hobby, but some good, old sibling rivalry and a bet pushed her to think about it as a serious business venture.
“I was having dinner with my brothers, and they teamed up against me and said, ‘We bet you can’t sell your candles for money.’ ‘I bet you I can,'” she said.
Within a few days, she had a name for her company, LUME, a website, and an online store. Within 48 hours, she had sold 40 candles, effectively winning the bet.
She said she chose the name LUME because she liked the word Illuminate and felt that since it was such a dark time during the COVID-19 pandemic, she wanted her brand to represent and emulate light.
The community in the Roaring Fork Valley has been supportive of her endeavors, and she now boasts retail partnerships with Craft Coffee, Radio Boardshop, and Mountain Flowers. In the summer of 2023, she decided to pursue building her company full-time.
“Our two most popular candles are ‘Bad and Bougie,’ which is a white birch and pine fragrance, and ‘Aprés All Day,’ which is grapefruit and pine, depending on what Aspen mood you are in,” she said.
Collins has also moved into collaborating with local businesses like the Michelin-star restaurant Bosq, as well as Hooch and Gravity Haus, creating custom candles, scents, and labels for their establishments.
“It’s a service that no one else is doing in Aspen,” she said. “We go through a whole process of creating the fragrances with their teams and do a lot of research and development with them which is specific to their businesses and brand. Upon completion, we have this cool thing that we created together.”
Six years after relocating to the valley, it seems that her leap of faith is starting to pay off, and, ultimately, her goal is to take the brand nationwide.
“I appreciate the Aspen community,” she said. “Their support in inviting me to events as a vendor, cross social media posting, and the businesses that have bought in and trusted me are everything. Also since Aspen is a resort town with so many visitors, it’s great that folks can walk into a store and buy and take a LUME candle home, no matter where they live. I want to see my candles in people’s homes across the country and share Aspen’s light in other people’s homes.”
