Candice Mauti, production supervisor for Broken Top Brands in Bend, pours candles Tuesday afternoon in the company's production facility. 

An infusion of cash from a silent partner is helping to take Broken Top Brands to the next level.

Broken Top Brands started out as a candle-making company in the Bend home of Affton Coffelt, and has grown to be more of a wellness brand that includes candles and home and body products.

The undisclosed cash infusion from Jake Peavy, a retired Major League Baseball pitcher, allowed the company to grow from that locally known candle company to a national brand that is in retailers like Nordstrom Rack, Bloomingdale’s, Barnes and Noble, Whole Foods and Amazon.

The company is on track to earn $3 million in revenue this year.

After hanging up his mitt, Peavy, became a silent partner in Broken Top. The cash Peavy invested in Broken Top has enabled the company to build an inventory of product for distribution and to expand its sales force, Coffelt said.

“We saw an opportunity for a partnership,” Peavy said in an email. “(Coffelt’s) track record with Broken Top speaks for itself. Combining that with her vision for the future has me excited to be on board.”

According to Live Data Technologies, Bend is a hotbed for entrepreneurs like Coffelt, who leans into risk, rather than run from it. The city was ranked No. 2 in the state for producing entrepreneurs behind Portland. Bend is ranked No. 30 nationwide of cities with new founders per capita, according to the software company.

Don Myll, the Bend area director for Economic Development for Central Oregon, said cultivating entrepreneurs is key to economic development in the region.

Bend is the home of the Pacific Northwest’s largest angel investment conference, which supports and hones startups, helping them grow businesses like Broken Top Brand, Myll said. The conference gives them exposure to other resources, some of which could be peers.

“Companies like those that pitch at (the monthly business meeting) PubTalk or learn from those pitches are able to receive catalytic coaching, mentoring services, access to resources to scale, thus creating new jobs and capital investment here in Central Oregon,” Myll said. “That fits part of EDCO’s mission: to create a diversified local economy and a strong base of middle-class jobs in Central Oregon.”

Starting from scratch

Eight years ago, Coffelt was a stay-at-home mother who made candles as a hobby. Her vision then was to sell them to friends as holiday gifts. That was in 2016. She approached Newport Market to see if the locally owned grocery store would sell her products — and they did.

“I wanted the company to be a locally relatable name,” said Coffelt, 38. “I kind of had a sense of where I wanted to go. I am always thinking big.”

Instantly, she had to bone up on barcodes, stock keeping units, labels and inventory control as the store placed an order for $400 worth of merchandise.

“They’re smelling the candles and I’m sweating, thinking this isn’t real,” Coffelt said. “They’re asking for universal product codes and minimum order quantities. I didn’t have any of that information.

“I started researching and found my path. I realized at that moment that I had found my path and had an opportunity to have an actual business.”

Growing a start up

Coffelt said she knew she wanted something bigger than a hobby business. But without actual business experience, she needed advisors and information.

She found a wholesale gift marketplace that helped market her products without having to make the pitch at individual stores. That was a huge discovery, but also provided a big problem. She needed products for inventory. At the time she made a dozen products.

A trade show in Las Vegas also helped launch the business by showing her that rather than pitching to individual stores, she could do a business to business model where she would turn the raw materials into products and another company would sell them.

“I decided then to focus on business to business rather than direct to consumer or online shopping,” Coffelt said. “Tapping into the trade show and getting into the gift industry helped established national placement.

“I am constantly needing to move forward and that’s just who I am. I love the excitement of doing something new, but the actual execution of the task, I’m not good with.”

That’s where a reliable team comes into play, she said. Early on she tapped her dad, Steve Shouse, to help her growth the business. He took over shipping and production.

Having Peavy on board has enabled growth in the company. Peavy, a serial entrepreneur, has investments in businesses, restaurants and bars across the country. He even invested in a sound studio in Alabama.

The company was renting a small space, but production was thwarted because the space had no air conditioning. Nothing worse than making candles in the summer that would melt before getting to the consumer.

Last year the company hit a milestone. The 10,000-square-foot production and shipping space and 30 employees should have been enough, but then the Whole Foods account demanded more growth.

“That was our biggest account so far,” Coffelt said. “We were struggling to manufacture in that space and it was so hot in the summer. Our candles wouldn’t settle because of the heat. Climate control was a big issue. We were at risk of losing our biggest account.”

That required yet another move to its current 18,000-square-foot production area on Twin Knolls Drive on the east side of Bend that’s climate-controlled.

The new space is enabling the company to be more efficient, Coffelt said. Today the company has more than 180 product codes now and offers a curated product line that has evolved over time and changed in response to customer preferences.

“When we started out, everything was colorful,” Coffelt said. “Our legacy look is botanical. We’ve been so lucky to continue to grow.”