We are a couple of creative, quiet achievers who like to just get on and ‘make things happen’ and stay behind the scenes – we want to let our fragrances and products ‘do the talking’ and hope they tell you the story of who we are, how passionate and driven we are and that quality and ‘the little details’ are important to us. We want you to enjoy the experience when purchasing a piece of g&e and feel you have spoilt yourself, with a well made, beautifully fragranced gift
Fragrance is at the heart of everything we do and it is what we are passionate about. We started g&e to allow us to explore our fascination with fragrance and how it can help transform a space and create a home you love, that just ‘feels like you’ and expresses who you are … when you open your door at the end of a busy day, you are greeted by a familiar and delicious fragrance that says “welcome home”…
We are always planning/working on what is next (there are two new products due to launch later this year)… So we hope you will continue on this journey with us. We truly value each and every one of you (our extended family) and love hearing your feedback and seeing pictures of product being enjoyed on social media (there may well be happy dances happening on the factory floor). Our main goal is that you love and enjoy our fragrant products, as much as we do making them for you
G&E began very humbly making scented soy candles in the kitchen with just a teapot, some wax and big dreams!
Our first retail outlet was our ‘pop up shop’ at the Queenstown artisan market and looking back, we couldn’t have asked for a better beginning. We got to listen to very valuable feedback direct from you, our customers – what you loved, what you didn’t, what was missing in our range and the market place and what you craved for in a fragrance… That feedback was sometimes tough to hear (especially on the days it was still only 2 degrees outside at 1pm), but it was honest and uncut and it formed the basis for our timeless first range ‘the classic range’. We’ve tried to deliver everything you asked for with this range and then not to mess with it
Our packaging journey began on a tight budget and sarah came up with the brilliant idea of wrapping the candles in book pages – the pages being from obsolete dictionaries and gardening books
We designed and printed our own labels and spent many evenings in front of the TV cutting the labels out (we don’t miss that at all!)
Production moved from the kitchen into the garage – which was about double the space and felt a big exciting move at the time. We put carpet down on the floor and hung curtains on the windows – it became a cosy candle production space and office
2012 saw us grow the business from having just our ‘pop up’ store at the Queenstown artisan market to by year-end having 10 stockists – which again, felt huge at the time. We were so proud and excited that the gorgeous Natalie of angel divine (a top designer store in Queenstown) approached us and became our very first stockist. That was the start of our amazing journey of getting product in to stores and we will eternally be grateful to Natalie for that early support. Seven years on and angel divine are still one of our top stockists
Gifted Design Store in Wanaka also came on board that year (our 2nd stockist) and to date they are our flagship store and stock the full range. Again, we are so appreciative of Caz and Rachel’s early support – when we look back now our packaging was still very much evolving and it amazes us that we had so much support early on, whilst we were still developing the brands identity and look
We made the first change to our packaging – reworking our label format and having them professionally printed. Again. it is a small thing, but it made a big difference to our lives at the time
Having outgrown the garage, we moved in December 2013 to our first commercial premises (a very proud and exciting moment) – we even learnt how to lay a wooden floor (never again!). We so loved this cosy space – it was perfect for building the business further
We introduced Reed Diffuser Sets to our scented soy candle range and made another tweak to our packaging – altering the design of the label further and introducing our signature cream colour
2014 was an exciting year for G&E with new packaging, a collaboration and further stockist growth. We also introduced crème perfume and room sprays into our product range
Packaging
Struggling to source vintage books sustainably, we decided to work with an artist and create our own pages. The last books we were using were gorgeous vintage floral books and all our stockists were requesting more of these pages, so that was the start of our journey into colourful botanicals …. an unexpected and happy twist to our story. We launched our new signature botanical packaging with five colourful artworks
Limited edition collaboration
Prone to getting bored and needing new projects – we worked with a local artist to create brushed steel vessels for our limited edition deluxe scented soy candle range. We loved these vessels and the whole vibe of the range – a super exciting and proud collaboration …. The cost to have these vessels made meant we didn’t continue this range into full production
2015 was another busy year for G&E – we continued to grow our stockist base and rearranged the work space for the 3rd time in 14 months. By mid year it was apparent that our cosy little home was becoming too small and we were going to have to find a new home by year end
The most creative photo shoot of our lives (thus far)…
We collaborated with photographer, Greta Kenyon and floral stylist, Lu Diamond late 2015 to create a series of images to form the basis of our new website. Our brief was for moody, darker florals and for the products to be a part of the floral story, rather than the florals just being a back drop
This was the most creative and fun shoot we have ever had and our brief was met and then exceeded. Watching the images unfold from the day, we were wowed by how they looked like ‘old master’ paintings – just magical and more than we could ever have dreamed of
We still love these images as much today (in 2018) as we did then and we are not sure how we are ever going to improve on them…
Thank you Greta and Lu for being so amazing : )
Having outgrown our cosy first commercial home – we moved in January 2016 to our new ‘factory’. Our new space was originally just a garage, so a lot of work had to be done to make it our new home. We are so grateful to our landlord for believing in our dream and our passion and making this all work. After hours and hours (and days) of painting by rose and what felt a huge moving day, we settled into our new home and we love being here, there is lots of natural light and we have high ceilings – its magical
Launch of our new website
The new website was a huge project for us and we worked with an amazing local company,Envy Design (who we still work with), to create a high functioning website that would match/work with all our gorgeous new floral images. The most important part of the website was our new wholesale login area – a game changer for us and our stockists
We absolutely love our new website – we finally have one that matches where we are in terms of our quality of products and brand positioning
2017 felt another big year with lots going on … we would hate to sit still
Packaging refresh
We decided to undertake a small refresh of our signature botanical packaging and move away from the original ‘book page’ style with the botanical image and writing, to being just about the botanical – and we love them! We also created two new botanicals (Chrysanthemum and Magnolia) to add more colour into the range and replace Orchid and Fuschia
The darker side
We created and launched the Darker Side Range in early 2017, as we wanted to include more complex fragrances that are layered with subtle nuances, into our fragrance library. These fragrances are confident and unapologetic in their stance to be noticed and we are super proud of this range, which includes scented soy candles, reed diffusers, room sprays and a crème perfume
We won an award – the lux global excellence awards
This was super exciting for us – we won an award for best soy candles 2017 and diffuser of the year 2017 for our 22:00 fragrance. Thank you Lux Magazine (UK)
It’s been a big year working on new projects (all due to launch in November) and continuing to grow our stockist base across New Zealand and Australia. To date we now have approx 95 fabulous stockists in the G&E family
Packaging Refresh – coming soon
It’s over four years now since we introduced our signature colourful botanical packaging, so we decided this year to refresh things again and work with a new artist. We will be moving over to this beautiful new botanical packaging in November 2018
New Product Launch – lightly perfumed hand cream – coming soon
We have been developing/working on our new hand cream range all year and are excited to announce it will be hitting the shelves in November. We are super proud of this product and can’t wait for you to try it. It is a natural hand cream free from any nasties and lightly fragranced so as to not interrupt the perfume you are already wearing – we hope you love this new product range
New Limited Edition Collaboration – coming soon
We still can’t say too much about this collaboration – but we are working with a top NZ Artisan to bring you something super special and it should be ready to launch in November… so watch this space…