Ep # 140 Igniting Passion: From Corporate to Candles

Meet Christi Kisela , the creative force behind Aura and Ember Company, who traded her twenty-year corporate leadership career for a studio filled with "wax, wicks, and wonder." What began as a simple search for clean-burning candles for her son with asthma has blossomed into a luxury candle and fragrance business that's capturing Charlotte's attention through scent and story.

Christi takes us behind the scenes of her Charlotte-inspired Queens Boulevard Collection, where each candle is named after local streets with rich histories. As a self-proclaimed "closet history nerd," she reveals fascinating tidbits about how Charlotte's roads were originally named to guide people to churches, and how historic intersections like Trade and Tryon transformed from horse-and-buggy commerce centers to modern urban hubs. Each fragrance carries these stories and connects users to Charlotte's vibrant past and present.

What truly sets Aura and Ember apart is their custom business fragrance service. Christi designs signature scents exclusively for companies that become their olfactory trademark—a formula they own for life. "When a business gets to give out something as an appreciation that is their signature moment, it creates that elevated customer experience," she explains. The artistry extends beyond beautiful scents; it's precise chemistry requiring specific temperatures, mixing times, and cooling periods to create the perfect candle. From their popular Selwyn Reserve and Glen Eagles fragrances to their new Explicit Desire collection, Aura and Ember is redefining luxury as both accessible and personal. Visit them online at auraember.com, follow their market appearances on Instagram @auraandember_co, or look for their upcoming permanent location at The Local Focal in Charlotte's Elizabeth neighborhood. Your new signature scent awaits!

Aura & Amber Co.

Christi Kisela 

uraandembercompany@gmail.com

Auraember.com

Transcript

Meet Christy Kithla of Aura and Ember

Speaker 1 0:00

is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Regina Lee.

Speaker 2 0:10

Hi everybody and welcome to another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast here in Charlotte. My name is Regina and I'm the owner of South Charlotte Media Group, and one of my favorite things to do is talk to local business owners. Today I'm chatting with Christy Kithla and she is the owner of Aura and Ember Company. Welcome, christy, thank you.

Speaker 3 0:33

Good morning Regina. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me today.

Speaker 2 0:37

Well, I love your company. You know what you do is very creative. I can tell you're so passionate about it. Tell everybody what Aura and Ember does.

Speaker 3 0:49

Yeah, absolutely so. Aura and Ember is a luxury candle and fragrance company and we're rooted in central storytelling product that we produce, from our moody wood-wicked candles to our small batch fragrances, which are perfumes and colognes, they're really crafted to evoke emotion, spark a connection and elevate, you know, everyday routines. We don't just sell a scent here, we sell a total vibe, and so, whether you're looking to unwind after a long day or you're setting the mood for something a little more intentional, auryn Ember is right here to help light the way and ignite the flame.

From Corporate Career to Candle Making

Speaker 2 1:34

Well, I love that. I am a big fragrance fan, love candles, so I'm just super interested how did you get into this?

Speaker 3 1:42

That is a great question. So, after spending two decades in corporate leadership, really helping large organizations learn how to run efficiently and effectively, I knew there was something missing. I wanted something that was really creative and personal and passionate. So Orin Ember was born during a moment of a personal recalibration for me and really taking a step back and finding an outlet for that creativity and to create some purpose. And what started as a simple hobby honestly has become a full-blown obsession with fragrance, design and connection, and so now I've traded my boardroom for a studio full of wax and wicks and wonder.

Speaker 2 2:29

I love that. So were you candle making and then just said, oh, I can make this into a business.

Speaker 3 2:35

I was. Yeah, I did it on the side. So it actually it started as a hobby one, to have that creative outlet. Two, to make sure that my son has really bad asthma. Hobby one to have that creative outlet two, to make sure that my son has really bad asthma. So we loved candles and we wanted to have something in the house that was clean, that we could all enjoy and appreciate. So this started years ago and in December my husband looked at me and said you know what? You've gotten really good at this. What do you think about trying to sell a few and see what happens? I was a little apprehensive at first and as the universe opens and unfolds, here we are today and I'm you know, I have a candle and fragrance business. It's really unbelievable.

Speaker 2 3:15

Okay, tell us what that first moment, or who was your first customer. How did you take that leap? Share the story, yeah that's a great question.

Speaker 3 3:24

So I my actually my very first customer was my neighbor and one of our very good friends and I just happened to mention it in passing. We had a cookout and some folks over and I was like, oh yeah, I started, you know, selling the candles on the side and I see what this happens and how this goes. And they they were my first and they've been, you know, phenomenal customers and repeats since then. So it's been great and now their friends are starting to purchase and their family members and word of mouth is starting to really take shape. It's fantastic.

Speaker 2 3:59

Well, one of the things I loved on your website is the names of your fragrances, so talk a little bit about that.

Speaker 3 4:06

Yeah, so we have a couple of different collections. Our main collection that we launched first was our Queens Boulevard collection. So all of the candles are named after Charlotte roads, and that came to be because I've lived in Charlotte for 30 years. I love this city, I love the growth that we've seen over the past 30 years. Past 30 years.

Speaker 3 4:34

I'm also a little bit of a closet history nerd, so, having the opportunity to, you know, look into why these roads were named the way that they were, I had no idea that Charlotte was so originally rooted in a church community and a lot of the roads were named as a way to lead people to those churches. So it's been a very interesting kind of way to learn more about Charlotte and the place that I call home and have been for a long time. But it's also inspiring, right. There's something special and unique about each of these roads and you drive down them and you think about, you know what life must have been like 100 years ago. So it's been really interesting.

Speaker 3 5:08

And I think back to probably one of my favorites was trade and try on right, and so you know, years and years and years ago it really was the epicenter of commerce and people would come from Pennsylvania. They would come from all over to what we know today as trade and try on and they would buy goods and, you know, go on their way. So it's just a very interesting thing to kind of think about trade and try on, you know, back in the day of horse and carriage right and horse and buggy to where we are today and it's still a very central part of our city.

Speaker 2 5:45

Very much so. I love it to hear too there's great history. Where do you come up with the sense you know? Are you concocting these yourself? History when do you come up with the sense you know?

Speaker 3 5:56

are you concocting these yourself and where do you get the inspiration? Yeah, that's a great question too. So I do a lot of them myself. We, because we love luxury and my husband is a teacher, so we've always been. You know, where can we? How can we live and do things that feel luxurious? You know, where can we, how can we live and do things that feel luxurious but be on a budget, and so that's where the inspiration really comes from.

Custom Scents for Businesses

Speaker 3 6:18

So I think about things like some of my favorite perfumes and some of his favorite colognes over you know time. So, like he loves Gucci Sport right, one of his favorite colognes so Mint Street is my interpretation of Gucci Sport. So for me that's really exciting too, because I get to play chemist and so part of you know, part of the way that I work is I love to have hands-on, I love to work through things. So having that trial and error and really, you know, diving into the different fragrances and scents has been so much fun. So, yeah, the inspiration really comes from the things that we love and we enjoy and that bring light and love to us, and we hope that it does for others as well.

Speaker 2 7:03

So on your website you have you offer private events, you have something called the Candle Lab. Yeah, what is all that?

Speaker 3 7:15

So we have our retail side right, which I love. It is very, very fun. But we also do a lot of work with local businesses. So I had an opportunity a couple months ago Gosh, I can't believe it's been a few months now to work with Community one insurance in Matthews and it created swag candles for them and it was really great.

Speaker 3 7:35

So we designed his fragrance. So that fragrance no other person will ever have access to, that is his for life. And you know the candles are very simple, that we used a white tin. We had a creative, you know scent him and then his logo on it. So he's now. You know he has events, he can give those out. You know customers recognize, you know, that fragrance as his own and that, I think, is where a lot of my passion really resides is finding that unique connection. So each company, each person, has something that is special for them, right, and it just creates that elevated customer service experience. When a business gets to give out something as an appreciation, that is their signature moment. So I absolutely love that. It's a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 8:30

That is cool. So you can have custom candles. How about? Is there custom fragrance as well?

Speaker 3 8:35

Yes, absolutely yeah. So that custom fragrance for individuals. So companies have the option, right, they can say, yeah, I'll take one of your standard fragrances or they can create something that's special just for them. So when we do that creation of that signature scent for that company and for their candles, no one else ever gets access to that fragrance. That is their formula for life.

Speaker 2 9:01

That is super cool, very cool. What kind of misconceptions do you find in your industry or when people reach out to you?

Speaker 3 9:10

The biggest myth is that candles are just candles. I don't think people realize that there's an artistry to this. So when you're making candles, you have to melt the wax, right, that's all good. Well, you need to melt it to a certain temperature and then you have to mix in the fragrances, and those fragrances need to be mixed for a full two minutes to really absorb into the wax. And then you want to let the wax cool to a certain temperature before you pour it so that it properly adheres to the candle tin itself. There's also the chemistry aspect of it, right, of getting the fragrance mixture just right and being able to maintain that recipe so that you can recreate that recipe over and over and over again.

Speaker 3 10:00

And for me there's so much emotion that goes into these candles. Right, and making sure that every person has a unique experience. Scent is powerful, right, it's tied to memories, it's tied to moods, it can even be tied to identity. So having that ability to kind of bring all of that forward is something I think people you know, maybe just don't understand. So you, you know, at at Aura and Ember, we're both luxury and we're personal, and I think that's what makes us different.

Speaker 2 10:35

What are your top sellers?

Speaker 3 10:39

Sell and Reserve is a big seller. Uh, glen Eagles is our had, consistently our top, especially in the fragrance department. Um, everybody loves to wear that one is consistently our top, especially in the fragrance department. Everybody loves to wear that one. And Mint Street is our third. Now I will say too, we just launched our Explicit Desire collection, and Undress Me is our first launch in that and it has been a huge success. So I have to make more today.

Speaker 2 11:09

Oh, that is awesome. How do people find your products? Where are you? Where do you sell?

Speaker 3 11:15

We are. So today we are online, so we have our website, auraembercom. Folks can also follow us on Instagram at auraandember underscore co. To get all the behind the scenes information, exclusive deals and find the markets that we're going to be in. I am also very excited to share with you that the local focal is a vendor-based storefront. They are opening in Elizabeth this summer and we will have a permanent spot in a brick and mortar, so follow along on Instagram and get all the info about the grand opening and come out and meet us and smell all the products.

Speaker 2 11:57

So do people order online just because of the name of it, because they can't smell it? I mean, how does that work?

Speaker 3 12:04

Most of the orders that we get online have been from word of mouth or from people that we've met at markets that are coming back for reorders, and we also have a recycle program. So you know, when folks get to the bottom of their container, they mail it back to me, I clean it out, I refill that fragrance and get it back to them and they get a big discount, which is awesome. So that's where a lot of our online orders have come from that is super cool.

Speaker 2 12:31

Yeah, idea there. Well, this has been amazing, so let's wrap up. Wrap up by you telling us how to find you, all of those places, um, that you want to share yeah, absolutely so.

Speaker 3 12:44

Check out our website at aura embercom and do follow us on Instagram at aura and ember underscore co. That has the very first pin that you're going to see every month is all of the markets that we're going to be at or our pop-up locations, so we'd love for everybody to come out and smell the candles and again, please be sure to follow us for the local focal and when that opens, you'll be able to come smell candles seven days a week.

Speaker 2 13:15

Very cool. Well, it has been a pleasure chatting with you today, Christy, and learning about your business. Thank you for being on the show.

Speaker 3 13:23

Regina, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 13:28

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPSouthCharlottecom. That's GNPSouthCharlottecom, or call 980-351-5719.