Our Story

GEORGE & EDI are artisanal, small batch producers, creating a range of joyful and fragrant things for your home & body.  Our mission is to create timeless, quality products that are beautiful in their simplicity, with fragrances that endure and bring a little luxury and joy to your every day

GEORGE & EDI was created in 2011 by Sarah and Rose (Sisters) in the beautiful town of Wanaka, nestled in the mountains of the South Island of New Zealand.  Their mission was to create timeless, quality, joyful and fragrant products that are beautiful in their simplicity, with fragrances that will endure and bring a little luxury and joy to the every day.

They created products in small batch production honouring the age old art of candle making and conscious manufacturing, minimising wastage and ensuring all products are fresh and of the highest quality.  They were inspired by the joy of colour and flowers and so have worked with fabulous botanical artists on stunning packaging that reflects this joy.  Fragrance was at the heart of everything they created and they were passionate about the quality and integrity of the fragrances and will never compromise on this

The business went from strength to strength from small beginnings selling candles at the local markets to becoming one of New Zealand’s favourite home fragrance brands with a growing product range, being stocked in premium outlets across New Zealand and a thriving online store.  In 2023 Sarah and Rose decided it was time to hang up the pouring jugs and pursue a new creative challenge.

Sarah & Aaron Parker were also looking for a new challenge and were impressed with what Sarah & Rose had created and so in Nov 2023 purchased GEORGE & EDI.  They have lots of experience in the gift industry in both retail and wholesale and are looking to use this experience to take GEORGE & EDI to the next level while still maintaining the beautiful artisanal production standards that Sarah and Rose created, but adding some new and exciting products too.  They also plan to take the scents of New Zealand to the world and the first step is an expansion into the Australian market in 2024.

George & Edi_perfumed soy candles_fig

We hope you continue on this journey with us.  We love hearing your feedback and seeing pictures of product being enjoyed on social media (there may well be happy dances happening in the workshop).  Our ultimate goal is that you love and enjoy our fragrant range of products, as much as we do making them for you.

The GEORGE & EDI Journey

  1. 2011 (JULY)
    THE CREATION OF GEORGE & EDI (G&E)

    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!)

  2. 2012 (JULY)
    GEORGE & EDI IN YEAR 1

    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

    Angel Divine – Signature Fragrance
    Angel Divine were our first stockist and the first to ask us for a signature fragrance – a total thrill and honour for us.  Natalie loved the idea of a Vanilla based fragrance and so the signature fragrance ‘ANGEL DIVINE’ was born … a gorgeous blend of cedarwood, grapefruit and vanilla – utterly divine 

    Company of Strangers – Signature Fragrance 
    We were excited to be asked by Sara of Company of Strangers to create a signature fragrance for them.  Sarah spent months working on the perfect ‘slightly darker’ fragrance for them and the result was ‘Oh Cult’ … an intriguing blend of sandalwood, citrus, spice and smoky notes.  A truly original and special fragrance

  3. 2013
    GEORGE & EDI IN YEAR 2

    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

  4. 2014
    GEORGE & EDI IN YEAR 3

    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

  5. 2015
    GEORGE & EDI IN YEAR 4

    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  : )

  6. 2016
    GEORGE & EDI IN YEAR 5

    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

  7. 2017
    GEORGE & EDI IN YEAR 6

    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)

    Limited Edition Collaboration with Kate Sylvester
    We were thrilled and honoured to be asked to collaborate with Kate Sylvester and her team on two limited edition candles (Sunshine & Moonlight) for Christmas.  The gorgeous colourful floral wrappers for these candles were from fabrics in their summer collection – too much fun!

  8. 2018
    GEORGE & EDI IN YEAR 7

    It’s been a big year working on new projects 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

    New Product Launch – lightly perfumed hand cream
    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 – G&E x Amanda Shanley
    We are excited to have been able to collaborate with Amanda Shanley, one of NZ’s top Ceramic Artisans, to bring you something super special –  a limited edition ceramic range launching November 2018 – the ‘Stripe and Splodge Series’.  French Pear is in the blue splodge vessel, Fig in the green stripe vessel and In Bloom in the pink stripe vessel – playful, colourful and limited edition

    Limited Edition Candle Collaborations – Kate Sylvester 
    We were honoured to be asked again this year to collaborate with Kate Sylvester and her team.  The first collaboration was for two candles (Blossom & Havana) to go with the launch of their Winter 2018 collection and the second collaboration was to create two candles (Ruby & Sky) that reflected the energy and playfulness of their summer collection.  We loved working on these collaborations and the paper wrappings for these candles were of fabrics from the respective ranges – everything we love, colourful and playful

  9. Creme Perfume pots - personal fragrance by GEORGE & EDI

    2019
    GEORGE & EDI IN YEAR 8

    Wow year 8 – we are super proud of this achievement and to celebrate, we have been working on lots of new projects to launch 1st October 2019. So we feel like it’s been a pretty big year and another pivotal one in the life of GEORGE & EDI. The highlights of the year:

    NEW SIGNATURE BOXES FOR OUR CANDLE PACKAGING
    we worked with cardboard engineer, matt from ‘think packaging’ to create a signature box for our candles.  We love these new boxes and to keep them playful they all have different coloured interiors

    PACKAGING REFRESH FOR OUR CRÈME PERFUME RANGE
    now we have our ‘totally delicious’ hand cream range, we wanted our crème perfumes to work better with them, so have designed new signature coloured boxes for each fragrance and a new raspberry pink glass pot with gold lid.  This enables us to have matching hand creams and crème perfumes in the fragrances fig, in bloom and liquorice.  Oh yes … we are launching the fragrance in bloom into the crème perfume range …. Which if the requests for this are anything to go by, is going to be really popular

    NEW PRODUCT LAUNCHING – PERFUMED SOY CANDLE REFILLS
    this product has been in the pipeline for a while, so we are super excited to finally bring it to life. We know many of you would love to reuse your GEORGE & EDI candle glass and these now make that possible. The candle refills are available in all fragrances and are designed to fit our standard size candle glass, but you can also use them in our large candle glass

    NEW FRAGRANCE – NO. 14 – LAKE WANAKA
    this fragrance celebrates our 8th year and is the fourteenth fragrance to join our fragrance family. Inspired by our beautiful home Wanaka, with its snowcapped mountains, glacial lake and also our love of wood notes and cosy fires – we are in love with this new fragrance and hope you will love it too

  10. GEORGE & EDI 2020 Journey

    2020
    GEORGE & EDI IN YEAR 9

    Well where did that year go!!  It’s been a very different year to what we had originally planned, but we are grateful to still be here and to be supported by so many amazing customers and stockists – so thank you to you all, we truly value all of your support!

    When it was announced the country was going into lock down, we cancelled all our planned projects and hunkered down to ride out the unknown that lay ahead …. It was definitely a time of anxiety around what would happen and how long we would be shut down for, but we had faith that we would be ok and find a way forward, even if things did change dramatically.  Due to all the amazing support we (and our stockists) received from customers online and the fact we didn’t stay locked down for longer, we were able to bounce back quite quickly.  By June we had the confidence to re start a couple of our projects and we are so happy to now be launching the below ‘new things’ for you, in October 2020

    TRIPLE MILLED, PERFUMED BAR SOAP
    We have been asked for years if we would make a soap and this year we decided would be our year to do this.  It has turned out to be ‘the year of soap’ in a way we couldn’t have imagined.  Our soap range consists of three triple milled, perfumed, moisturising bar soaps that complement our hand cream and crème perfume range in the fragrances fig, in bloom and liquorice.  We are really proud of these soaps and hope you love them too

    POT POURRI RANGE
    This very pretty product actually came to life during lock down. We often took walks in a local park and being autumn, the trees were full of bright red and orange leaves and the hydrangeas in the garden at home were changing colour and near the end of their blooming …. It just kind of happened one day that we were inspired to save all those blooms and dry them for pot pourri, adding some gorgeous autumn leaves to the mix and fragrancing this floral mix with our fragrances No.14 (inspired by our beautiful home Lake Wanaka) and In Bloom. This first batch is limited edition ….

    COLLABORATION WITH ‘ONE OF A KIND’ CERAMICS
    We love all things ceramic and wanted to create a beautiful range of ceramics to complement a few of our fragrant offerings, so we are honoured that Angela Francis of ‘One Of A Kind’ ceramics, agreed to collaborate with us and bring this vision to life.  We are in love with the dishes she has produced for us – soap dishes, tea light holders and potpourri dishes, in 3 of our signature colours – pink, green and blue.  We think you will love them too …. they make our fragrant products even better!

  11. George & Edi packaging changes 2021

    2021
    GEORGE & EDI IN YEAR 10

    Another year has flown by! Oct 2021 marked our 10th Anniversary – an achievement we are so proud and excited to have reached.  It has been quite the journey and yet in some ways has gone so very quickly!

    THANK YOU
    We couldn’t have achieved this amazing milestone without all the support from our fabulous stockists and loyal customers, so from the bottom of our hearts, big love and thanks to all of you – your support means the world to us … THANK YOU!!

     

    What was new this year ……

    CANDLE BOXES
    We refreshed our standard size candle boxes and these hit the shelves in February/March 2021. These new candle boxes blend our previous signature coloured boxes with our signature floral boxes – which makes them so very colourful and fun.  We also introduced two new florals – Pink Cacti and Alpine Flowers – which enabled us to bring the colour YELLOW into our mix – a colour we have been wanting to introduce for years – it makes us soo happy!

     

    ROOM SPRAY BOXES
    To make merchandising for our stockist and shipping a little easier, we created boxes for our Room Spray Range.  We love these sage green boxes and hope you are enjoying them too

     

    GIFT BOXES
    These were launched late Nov 2020 and we are in love with our signature small dark plum box and large sage green box.  We now have a range of different gift box options for you in both our body range of products and home fragrance range of products – our goal is to make gifting as easy as possible for you

  12. George And Edi 2022

    2022
    GEORGE & EDI IN YEAR 11

    2022 – where did you go?  That one felt fast, probably because we spent months preparing and then relocating our lives and the business to Queenstown (for personal reasons). The big move happened over Easter 2022 and it took two big truck loads and several car trips to move the business here – we don’t travel light!  We love our new premises and feel like we have always been here – which is great!  We will always love Wanaka and it has a very special place in our hearts, as it is where G&E was born and spent its important first 10.5 years growing and evolving…

    WHAT WAS NEW THIS YEAR

    Our Second Collaboration, Artisanal Range with Amanda Shanley

    We were thrilled to be able to collaborate again with the amazingly talented Dunedin artist Amanda Shanley.  This range is called ‘scribble’ and celebrates our mutual love of colour and playfulness with a ceramic scribble vessel candle in our fragrance 22:00 (a magical and very special combination) and two ceramic mug options

     

    Our Two New Gift Box Offerings

    Amanda’s beautiful ceramic mugs have been one of our most favourite things for many years now, so it was only natural that they formed the basis for these two new gift box offerings ….

    Sarah’s Favourite Things

    The foundation of this gift box is the scribble mug and Sarah’s other most favourite thing, coffee – so this one is for all the other coffee lovers; Allpress Coffee, Bennetto Raspberry dark Chocolate, a Havana Candle and In Bloom Hand Cream.  Everything you need for a quiet Sunday arvo (or any time that suits you) of relaxing and ‘chilling’ at home

    Roses’s Favourite Things

    This gift box is for the tea lovers like Rose; the heart of the box is the gorgeous blue mug and then to go with that, her favourite Harney & Son’s Paris Tea (loose leaf), a tea strainer, Bennetto Hazlenut Chocolate, Rhubarbe Candle and Liquorice Hand Cream – beautiful things to ‘take a moment’ and relax with

  13. George And Edi History In 2023

    2023
    GEORGE & EDI IN YEAR 12

    Another year has flown by and Oct 2023 marks our 12th Anniversary – a milestone we are very proud of and one we couldn’t have achieved without the support of all of our fabulous stockists and customers – thank you!!

    WHAT WAS NEW THIS YEAR

    We introduced new packaging for our home fragrance products this year – it is the packaging we have always wanted!  Each fragrance now has a signature colour and floral box in the candle and reed diffuser ranges and the room spray box colour matches these.  We have also added stripes to the boxes, which brings a little extra playfulness.  Our beautiful new floral/botanical artworks are by the amazingly talented Australian botanical artist, Helen Fitzgerald.  We hope you love this new packaging as much as we do

     

    BIG DECISIONS

    We made the very big decision this year to sell G&E. We are two creative souls both incredibly proud of what we have been able to create with G&E. It has been an amazing ride and we couldn’t be more grateful for the journey it has been. Year 12 feels the right time for us personally to move on to new adventures and to bring in new owners/leadership to take G&E to the next level

    As of 1st November 2023, Sarah Parker is the new owner of G&E and we are excited to see G&E grow and thrive under her leadership

    We so very grateful for the support we have received from all of our fabulous suppliers, customers and stockists over these last 12 years – we couldn’t have done it without you all, so from the bottom of our hearts, thank you, your support has meant the world to us

    Much love, Rose & Sarah