Hello again.
I had to split the March entry into two blog posts because I couldn’t stop yapping on in the first one.
Let's pick up where we left off… I had a few workshops under my belt which meant my experience was growing and the demand was definitely there. The workshops were more popular than my individual candles and I wanted to keep momentum up.
I decided to join a business course membership that I had my eye on for a while to help me hone in on this new workshop service. Since going through the course, I’ve questioned everything I thought I wanted Pique to be and what success looks like for the business.
Experience-led focus
Pique looks like it’s headed into an experience-led focus, with workshops being the ‘hero-product’ as it were. I’ve introduced a waitlist for the workshops which has proved popular, it’s already contributed to selling out our May sculpture workshop two months before the workshop date! I’ve had to release a couple extra tickets for those who didn’t get a chance to book.
With the growing demand for the workshops, I’m starting to realise I need to dream bigger than I first realised. Where else can I host these workshops? Where will there be demand? Can I create demand? London? Manchester? Can I take this abroad?
Brand
Is ‘Pique’ the correct name/brand to take me there? I originally chose the name Pique because of the shape of the candles, they always piqued everyone's interest, hence the name made sense, and still does in that instance.
But now I feel like there is a secondary meaning to the name, Peak - to reach a highest point, either of a specified value or at a specified time. With this new found ambition, I want to make the most of the brand, and I want to make it obvious that I’m here to stay and grow as much as possible.
Pique’s tagline is ‘Everyday candles, elevated’ which still rings true, but this will need to change to an experience-led focus tagline - if I even have one at all?
When I think about my ideal customer, they are typically women who are aged between 20’s to 40’s, work a full-time job and have a little to a-lot of expenditure income to spend on little luxuries. She isn’t just in the city on the weekends, she likes going on countryside getaways and on a little beach getaway too. I’m almost thinking of a Soho House kinda girl, who likes going to Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire, she goes to Soho House in London but she’d also love a Soho House in Cornwall.
Wherever she is, she wants to have fun and get away from the normalities of her life.
2026 goals
Thinking about my ideal customer, I think I could grow the workshops from city centre experience which is what it is right now, to countryside and beach escapes which opens me up to a world of possibilities. Could I have summer workshops every week at popular beach resorts in the UK? Could I have a standing workshop at Soho Farmhouse or Daylesford? Glastonburys Greencrafts Village? And that’s just the UK!
I think by the end of this year I’ll be hosting workshops in some of the bigger cities in the UK. I’m thinking of Birmingham, London, Manchester & Liverpool… so it looks like I need to start venue hunting and finally purchase a car. If any of you know anything about buying a car please let me know, I need all the help I can get with vehicles.
That’s it for now. Speak to you next month.
Aman x