About the business: Smell of Love Candles is a vegan-soy candle business created by now-12-year-old “kidpreneur” Alejandro Buxton and his mom, Patricia Buxton. What started in September 2020 as a small operation out of their Vienna kitchen is now a multiemployee company with a new presence at Tysons Corner Center — with plans to open a store of its own.
How it started: Alejandro loves to read, play with Legos — standard kid stuff. But he also caught the family’s entrepreneurial bug.
In 2019, at 9 years old, he wanted to make healthier candles than the ones they had at home. “Jurassic Orange” was the first. His mom suggested there could be a business here.
But she didn’t just hand over the startup capital.
“I made him pitch to myself and my mom,” Patricia, an attorney by trade, said. “He started with $500. It’s been a lot of reinvesting, and I’ve tapped into my own personal savings. I keep telling him, it’s a loan with no interest. It’s for his future.”
Smell…
Read the full story from the Washington Business Journal.
