These days, it’s typical for a new business to launch with just social media and an ecommerce website, and that’s exactly what Karol Sierra-Yanez and Daniel Schafer did with Traum Fragrances.
The married couple launched its candle company in November 2024, initially hoping to sell 20 to 30 candles. In the first few weeks after launch, they had sold more than 100.
The Traum Fragrances website started with just a “coming soon” landing page. That, along with the brand’s Instagram and Facebook pages, helped “build some hype” before launch, Schafer said. It also helped collect emails to start a list of interested consumers for Traum Fragrances. The brand then timed its launch around Black Friday.
But starting a new business wasn’t easy, nor was it fast, Sierra-Yanez and Schafer told Digital Commerce 360. They had spent about a year developing their branding, locking in their suppliers and labor force, deciding what kind of ecommerce platform to use and doing their legal due diligence.
Karol Sierra-Yanez and Daniel Schafer launched Traum Fragrances, a candle company, in late 2024 and share how they plan to grow the new ecommerce business in 2025.
Editor’s note: Read about how Traum Fragrances selected a platform for its business in Digital Commerce 360’s newest edition of its annual Ecommerce Platforms Report.
How Traum Fragrances launched its new ecommerce business
Sierra-Yanez moved to the U.S. from Colombia while still a student. Her uncle, who is her only relative in the U.S., loved and worked with fragrances. He gave her her first perfume and always had candles. Since then, she always had candles with her as she went through school and learned English.
“They were kind of like my constant companion through all the different stages of my life since moving to the U.S.,” she told Digital Commerce 360. “After a while, I couldn’t find the specific fragrance that I wanted, and so I started with the idea of, why don’t we develop our own?”
Among the difficulties Traum Fragrances faces are that it has to factor in the labor cost of being made in the U.S., and that supply prices had increased between when the couple was creating the brand and when they launched. The brand’s candles are hand-poured in California, as opposed to being machine-manufactured outside of the country, Schafer said.
“The biggest benefit is the trade uncertainties,” Schafer said. “Once you have everything manufactured in the U.S., it is more costly, but we do like it because you’re not running into any potential labor issues, child labor issues that you might have in other countries. It is more expensive, but at the same time on tariffs, trade wars — all of that stuff — you’re isolated from. That gives us a good peace of mind.”
The new ecommerce retailer hasn’t faced challenges from tariffs so far, Sierra-Yanez said. “But we’ll see,” she added.
How a new brand figured out how much inventory to stock
The company Traum Fragrances works with that pours the wax for its candles requires a minimum of 500 units per scent, Sierra-Yanez said.
“We said, ‘OK, if you require 500 units, then that’s what we’re going to start with per scent,’” Schafer said. “And so with that, we felt fairly comfortable that we at least can sell that quantity over the course of a year time frame or hopefully even less.”
Traum Fragrances hasn’t set a specific sales goal yet, like selling 300 candles in the first couple months, Schafer said. Instead, it’s more focused on optimizing its website experience. That starts with analyzing web traffic volume, bounce rate, order rate and optimizing the landing page, he said. From there, it works on improving its ad copy, testing different copy sets for performance.
“We want to be mindful and not just start throwing $5,000 out on advertisement, hoping it comes back,” Schafer said. “In the beginning, it’s still a lot of tweaking, optimizing to then ultimately get the best bang for your buck.”
The same applies to social media, Sierra-Yanez said. There, Traum Fragrances needs to create content that reflects what they want to convey, which is that the brand represents her life turned into scents.
Exploring wholesale as a new ecommerce business
In addition to social media and digital marketing, Traum Fragrances seeks to expand its brand exposure by entering the physical retail arena, Sierra-Yanez said.
The brand wants to get its products into larger retail stores, she said. She added that Traum Fragrances would need to at least double the number of scents it has (it sold four when she spoke with Digital Commerce 360 and has added a scent since).
Retailers that would buy wholesale from Traum Fragrances “want more options, and we’re not there yet. The idea is to get settled and maybe just target local stores to begin with. That’s our strategy right now.”
Even if Traum Fragrances could land an opportunity selling wholesale to a large retailer, it isn’t in a position just yet to take on that responsibility, Schafer said.
“Even if we were to get into a much, much larger retailer and they would request thousands of products, that would put us in a difficult situation as of now because it takes a certain amount of lead time to get the candles ready,” he said. “For us it goes back to the principle of slow and steady. If we were to get an opportunity to get into a large retailer, certainly we wouldn’t be opposed to it, but it couldn’t happen from one day to the next.”
Schafer anticipates it would take five or six months of lead time. In the meantime, Traum Fragrances is talking to local and smaller retailers in an effort to establish its brand name. From there, it will have a better line of sight into what inventory it has available “so we’re not running into the issue of running out of candles while the website is live and consumers have to wait months to get their product.”
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