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In Profile: Candlelight
Inset: Candlelight’s founder and major shareholder Mike Winch. Below: Eyelashes, a new Autumn/Winter collection of ‘girlie’ products, are already flying off the shelves. Bottom: Wax filled glass vessels are part of Candlelight’s new branded candle collection.
Rockin’ All Over The World Back in 1972, in the far off days of PM Ted Heath, the miners’ strike and power cuts, 23 year old Mike Winch and a friend started Candlelight Products from a barn in Rotherham with just a £20 investment which they used to create a candle making machine. Forty six years later, the company - which has proudly remained in Rotherham, and now trades from 145,000 sq ft landmark premises - has a turnover of close to £30m, and is currently going back to its roots with a range of branded candles. But that’s by no means all, as Mike tells PG&H. The growth plan is to double the company’s turnover to £60m over the next three years - which includes making some top level appointments this Autumn. If it hadn’t have been for the miners’ strike, Mike Winch could well have been another Pete Townsend! “As a 15 year old schoolboy in the ‘60s, I was already playing five nights a week in a band called The Origators Creed. We were topping the bill by the time I was 16, with Joe Cocker second on the bill to us!” he smiles proudly, recalling those heady days of being a young Rotherham ‘rock star’. “It’s my claim to fame, along with the fact we played many gigs where we supported the Cream, Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood, Pink Floyd and Wilson Pickett. (Proving that he’s still a rock n’ roller, Mike recently took his teenage
granddaughters to a Rolling Stones concert in Manchester that saw them rockin’ in the aisles with the best of them!). After five years, Mike (or maybe it was his parents (!), both academics), decided it
was time he got a ‘proper’ job, so he took the decision to go into sales (“I was effectively doing it already with the band”), starting out with Campbell Soups and subsequently joining Johnsons Wax which sold polishes. “It was during the miners’ strike and I kept getting asked if the company sold candles. It didn’t, but it gave me a good idea! I was young, entrepreneurial and willing to take a risk, so Candlelight was subsequently born in a barn, rented out to me and a friend Ray at £3 a week, by someone my mother knew!” Four years later, Mike became an importer, moving on from candles into giftware, with Candlelight gradually evolving, decade by decade, to become what it is today - a major designer, importer and wholesale supplier of design-led giftware, home accessories and seasonal products, supplying retail outlets across the board - Blue Chips, multiples, independents, department stores, Progressive Gifts & Home Worldwide
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