irm Statista expects the global candle market to continue to grow at an annual compound growth rate of 2.88 per cent from 2023 to 2028. While candle sales for heritage brands like Diptyque and Jo Malone remain steady as ever, there’s a growing market for candle brands that focus on elements like sustainable packaging and formulation, LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC representation, and unique scent offerings.  This is where the Brooklyn-based brand The New Savant makes its mark.  Making waves in the fragrance industry The New Savant stands out from legacy fragrance brands in a few key ways.  In addition to leaning into sustainability — such as with the brand’s stainless steel containers, made from 25 per cent post-consumer content, and vegan and cruelty-free candle formulations — The New Savant prioritises making scents for an often underserved audience.   Since the brand launched in December 2020, co-founders Ingrid Nilsen and Erica Anderson have strongly emphasised the brand’s representation of and support for the LGBTQIA+ community. One of the company’s best-selling products is its “Dreamgirl” candle, described as “a revisionist history of sorts, this scent reimagines young love through a queer lens.”  Nilsen explained that the candle was inspired by the song “Girls Make Me Want To Die” by The Aces and brought to mind the question of what it would have been like to be able to date her dream girl back in high school, a fantasy she was unable to fill as a closeted teenager, and what scents may have been associated with that experience.  “That fragrance out of all of the ones that I’ve created so far, was the most fun to create because it felt so healing to go back and be in that space that I didn’t actually get to play in my real life and to really just give that part of myself the dramatic romance that I had dreamed of,” Nilsen recalled. “When we put that fragrance out, we realised how many other queer people had very similar experiences… There is grief around those younger years and feeling like you missed out on a dating experience […] and I think that’s really such a strong example of what we’re doing with fragrance. “We’re not only like making things that people think are interesting in terms of sense, but they’re [the consumers] also really attaching themselves to and seeing themselves in the stories.” In multiple ways, Nilsen and Anderson’s professional backgrounds have primed the two to tell distinctive stories through fragrance. Prior to launching The New Savant, Nilsen was an influencer with over one million Instagram followers and almost four million subscribers to her YouTube channel. Her content was primarily centered around lifestyle and beauty topics, which allowed her to test out a variety of products over the course of 11 years. For Nilsen, it felt like a natural transition to move into creating fragrance products, a particular element of beauty that she loved, once she decided to stop focusing primarily on content creation.  Anderson also has a rich background in content creation, from being a correspondent on MTV News to working in digital strategy for CBS and Twitter to content and partnerships executive producer at Vox Media, before joining forces with Nilsen to launch The New Savant. It was her background in journalism, social media, and operational and strategic expertise as well as Nilsen’s background as a hands-on content creator and her cultural identity that enabled the two to help fill in the white space of the candle market. Numerous products from the brand are centered around Nilsen’s background as a person of Thai and Norwegian descent and both Nilsen and Anderson’s experiences as members of the LGBTQIA+ community.  For example, the candle dubbed “Mixed Feelings” was inspired by Nilsen’s mixed-race heritage and features notes such as white jasmine, crisp pear, and steamed rice. In May, the brand also launched a limited-edition candle created for the Women’s National Basketball Association’s New York Liberty team in celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, which almost immediate sold out.  Anderson recounted the brand’s origin story to Inside Retail: “We’ve known each other for five years, we were in a romantic relationship and now we’re just co-founders and family. But we decided to start the business together and we launched it in December of 2020. Ingrid made 500 candles at her home in Brooklyn, and we launched them on Instagram and they sold out within seven minutes. And so we knew right away that there was an appetite for what we were creating and the stories we were telling with sent and that was really just the beginning.” Currently, the majority of the brand’s profits derive from e-commerce, approximately 90 per cent. Products from The New Savant can now also be found in specialty boutique shops across the US, Canada, and Australia, with long-term plans from the brand to expand with larger-scale retailers like Target or Anthropologie. The co-founders are planning to expand the company into the wearable fragrance category, starting with a more price-accessible product like body spray.   Anderson claims that the brand’s revenue has doubled every year since launch, with zero customer acquisition cost and no funding raised to date.