Burn

5MADE IN AMERICA

As I've always joked, candles are like condoms: they're recession‐proof. The Asian financial crisis (1997), dot.com bubble, post‐9/11 recession, Great Recession (2007–2009), and the COVID‐19 pandemic devastated countless industries. But candle sales only surged. When travel, jewelry, or other high‐end consumables prove too expensive, consumers turn to candles as affordable and attractive luxuries.

Rather than global downturns, our existential threat arrived in the early 2000s and took the form of antidumping tariffs. Many countries impose these duties on certain companies or product categories to ensure that these imports compete fairly with their domestic rivals. America is no exception. If one bad actor “dumps” products in the American market at unfairly low prices, domestic competitors can petition the Department of Commerce to initiate antidumping reviews.

As a non‐market economy whose exports had increased exponentially in the 1990s and early 2000s, China was subject to especially stringent antidumping rules. If one Chinese company dumped products like candles into the U.S. market, antidumping rules issued against those factories applied to everyone in the industry, regardless of whether they had actually dumped products.

Antidumping duties had always been a business reality for our company, and each year they cut deeper into our profit margins. As I saw these tariffs mount around 2000, I had a sneaking suspicion they might destroy the Chinese candle ...