From butcher and baker to candlestick maker…

Megan’s Stornoway-based candle operation is set to move from its current rented unit on James Street into the building that was home to the Blackhouse Bakery until 2023. The Sandwick Bay Candles lifestyle shop will remain in its premises on South Beach Street.

The relocation and expansion of the workshop means Sandwick Bay can increase production of some lines, including handwash, and also have a space where they can host events, such as candle-making workshops.

Megan hopes to be ready to move into the new workshop in Plasterfield in July, with some interior refurbishment to do before then.

Before it was Blackhouse Bakery, the Plasterfield landmark was Mackinnon’s Bakery and it has also been home to the general purpose Plasterfield Store and a butcher’s shop back in the 70s.

Announcing her new move on social media on the day she got the keys, and referencing the Rub-a-dub-dub nursery rhyme, Megan said: “Now it will be home to my candle making business. I can’t help but feel that there’s a beautiful symmetry to this.”

Megan added: “When I first started making candles at home on my kitchen table I never could’ve imagined the day I would be stepping into a building to call my own. What a ride.”

Megan started up her business at her kitchen table at home in Lower Sandwick in 2016 and was expanding for the first time a year later, when she moved the operation upstairs into her loft.

In 2019, she took external premises for the first time, renting a small unit from the council in the business complex at 7 James Street. A few years after that, she was moving downstairs to a bigger unit that had been vacated.

The lifestyle shop on South Beach opened in May 2021 but Plasterfield is Sandwick Bay Candles’ first property buy – and will hopefully enable growth of the workforce as well as production.

Sandwick Bay Candles currently employs 10, with four full-timers including Megan and the others working part-time. She hopes to employ at least two more members of staff with this new move.

“That’s the goal,” said Megan. “We can’t be in all that space with just one person making it, so the plan is to grow employment as well as production.”

She said the business had been “steadily growing” and is “really excited” by this next step. “We’ve definitely outgrown the workshop and I’ve been looking for a wee while. We looked at it last year and it wasn’t the right timing and then looked at it again at the beginning of the year and timing just worked out. It’s fallen into place.”

Megan received a big boost in 2019 when Theo Paphitis of Dragon’s Den fame chose Sandwick Bay Candles as one of his ‘Small Business Sunday’ winners and gave Megan a free stand at a huge trade show in Birmingham.

This launched her into the wholesale world and led to the opening of the shop. And while Megan carries other stock, her candles remain 80 per cent of trade – although she rarely gets the luxury of pouring a candle anymore, due to the pressures of running the business.

Reflecting, she said: “I’ve learned so much about how to run a business and still learning. I love it. I like to see how we can keep it growing and I think now, because you employ people, it definitely makes you more motivated because you’re responsible for them as well.”