The Candlemakers’ Tale
At first glance, Sniffs of Adventure looks like any other red brick Newbury Street store. But up close, warm yellow lights flickering through the storefront windows and whiffs of fragrance seeping out tell it apart as a one-of-a-kind candle shop.
Walking in last Friday night, it was hard to believe the 10 people sitting around a table in the back — laughing, eating, and mixing scents into hot candle wax — were strangers less than 40 minutes prior. But for candle-making connoisseurs Adam Shane and Christopher Swank, this easy-going sociality is nothing new.
“Ninety-five percent of our classes are like this,” Swank says when asked about the liveliness of the candle-making workshop, affectionately called ‘Sip N’ Sniff.’ “We were going to have shirts made once that said, ‘Making Candles With Strangers is Fun.’”
Ironically, this hub of community interaction bloomed out of a period of isolation. When the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020, Shane and Swank looked for ways to pass the time together. Initially, the couple flew through episodes of Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Swank, a fifth-grade teacher thrown into the trenches of online classes, was hooked. However, Shane, a trade show manager, growing bored of the series, spontaneously ordered a candle-making kit off of Amazon.
Bits and pieces of what would one day become Sniffs of Adventure started piling up in the couple’s kitchen. Shane began crafting candles, heating wax melts in a pot, mixing in scented oils, pouring the concoction into wicked jars, and pouring himself into candle-related research.
“Adam had done all the research and figuring it out,” Swank says. “And he was like, ‘Oh, well, there’s beeswax, there’s coconut wax, there’s soy wax. They’re all, you know, they’re all good for you. But soy wax is the most clean and the most healthy.’”
A couple of weeks later, as Shane’s interest in the hobby continued to grow, Swank jumped on board.
Neither would have guessed that three years later, Sniffs of Adventure would have locations in both Boston and Provincetown, as well as established stands at renowned fairs and markets across Massachusetts, all stocked full of their 100 percent soy candles.
At the Newbury Street and Provincetown locations, Sip N’ Sniff candlemaking experiences have been a hit since the couple started offering them. Participants pay $75 to spend one to two hours creating a custom scent, preparing their own candle tins, and return a few days later to pick up their works. Since Sip N’ Sniff first began, Shane and Swank have taught nearly 3,000 people how to make their own candles.
In the Newbury location, as eager candle-making students first enter the bright orange shop, they are greeted by old-fashioned clocks displaying the times for six cities — Boston, Manarola, Cape Town, Kyoto, Cairns, and Kauai. Each candle sold at Sniffs of Adventure is connected to one of the couple’s many adventures together. The candle “A Parisian Affair,” based on their travels to Paris, contains scent notes of lilac, lavender, and honeysuckle. “Kyoto Blossoms” with scents of white tea, bergamot, and ginger is named after their trip to Japan this past summer.
Much of Sniffs of Adventure’s appeal seems built on its storytelling. The shop is filled with small nods to Shane and Swank’s lives: On one side of the wall, thick black lines connect locations on a map to photos of Shane and Swank’s travels. As he shows us around, Swank points to a black pot sitting on the shelf where they keep their scented oils. It’s from Shane’s first candle-making kit, a memento of how it all began.
At Friday’s Sip N’ Sniff, Swank breaks the ice with a slide-show presentation detailing the story of Sniffs of Adventure. If one thing is clear, it is just how important Shane and Swank’s friends have been to the success of their waxy endeavor. Their candle-making evolved from a hobby, confined to a kitchen; to a pop-up shop where friends and family ordered; to their first ever stall at a market; and now, finally, a store.
“Our friends have pushed us into nearly everything,” said Swank. “Especially in the beginning, it was our friends who told us, ‘You can really do this.’”
Their friends’ support fueled the couple’s drive so much so that a casting director for Shark Tank even invited them to audition for the show. To the Sip N’ Sniff participants, Swank replays what his opening line would’ve been had they made it on:
“Mr. Wonderful. Listen, I know you’re not into candles. And for that reason, you’re out.”
The couple was cut in the final rounds before the season decisions. A few months later, the couple and their business manager Jeffrey Gaudor came up with the idea of Sip N’ Sniff.
“We concept-ed the whole thing in like 10 minutes,”said Swank. “We’d always talked about it but we didn’t have the space at the time.”
After the back-story presentation on Friday, Swank, though retired from elementary school education, gracefully takes his place at the front of his new classroom to walk us through the process. Six shelves of scented-oils sorted into categories — woodsy, fruity, sweet, citrus, floral, fresh, and marine — are available to the students to sort through and mix together. Most of the participants have come with a friend or partner, but all are chatting across the table and around the room, making friends as quickly as candles.
