Broken Top Candle Co. founder Affton Coffelt displays some of her products in Bend. (Dean Guernsey/Bulletin photo)

Broken Top Candle Co. founder Affton Coffelt spent six weeks on the road this winter, traveling to trade shows and meeting with buyers, including a team from Macy’s.

In April, her small crew shipped three pallets of products to Terrain, a chain of garden stores under the same parent company as Anthropologie. Through a wholesale relationship with TJX Cos., Broken Top also made its first international shipments to England and Ireland.

“The last six months have painted the picture for the company,” Coffelt said. She expects gross sales to at least double by the end of the year. With a few key accounts on the books, Coffelt, 33, said she can start to think big. “Target is totally on my radar,” she said. “We see it as being baby steps. It’s all about brand awareness.”

Coffelt, named Entrepreneur of the Year by the Bend Chamber of Commerce, was a stay-at-home parent who’d gone through treatment for cervical cancer when she started making candles in her kitchen in 2015. Selling at first to friends and family, she made $8,000 in three months. Realizing she was onto something, she got her candles into Newport Avenue Market. Then, she started chasing more accounts.

“It clicks for me,” Coffelt said. “I get wholesale.”

Broken Top Candle Co. makes candles and bath and body products in a small warehouse space on Boyd Acres Road. Coffelt has five full-time and part-time employees, several of whom are old friends and family members.

It takes a savvy wholesaler to rise above the fray, said Jennifer Riker, owner of the Brave Collective boutiques. “If you go to any of these gift trade shows, it’s candles after candles,” she said. “It’s a really saturated market, and it’s a tough business.”

Riker recently decided to start selling Broken Top candles and body care products in her two Portland- area stores. One reason is the packaging. Broken Top last year changed its labels to a black and white color scheme with botanical motifs. Boutique shoppers are drawn to a minimalist look, Riker said. “She captured that.”

Broken Top candles are also 100% soy and scented with essential oils, two criteria that are important to people who want natural, “clean” products, Riker said.

Broken top sells its 9-ounce candles for $24, and that isn’t unreasonable for boutique customers, Riker said. Broken Top’s candles will replace another line of 100% soy candles that cost $90, she said.

Coffelt has always paid close attention to feedback and questions from her buyers. In the beginning, Broken Top’s candles were a blend of paraffin and soy wax, but she switched to soy once she realized what was driving the requests for all plant-based wax.

Similarly, Coffelt wasted no time switching the entire line of candles to botanical-themed packaging, based on an explosion of orders for Christmas candles that were in the same style. Then in January, she introduced lotion and soap, and soon after that added linen spray. A perfume is due out May 15.

The expanded product line makes Broken Top look like it’s a company that’s here to stay, Coffelt said. And it opened doors in an age of retailing that’s more about selling a look or lifestyle than categories of products.

Many of Broken Top’s wholesale customers are garden centers and florist shops, she said. The deal with Terrain was for lotion, soap and linen spray. The competition in personal care products is no less intense than in candles, but Coffelt said, “It was the best thing I ever did.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7860, kmclaughlin@bendbulletin.com