Tara Carlile-Swift, co-founder of award-winning home fragrance company Freckleface – currently stocked in over 850 UK gift shops and garden centres – was featured in the ‘How I Made It’ section of The Sunday Times’ Business News supplement yesterday (22 September).
Looking back over the company’s trajectory, Tara explained that, in 2017, she took the decision to launch the business with her son Noah, then 14, “to boost his confidence” as he struggled at school.
Initially, they started the business in the time honoured way, from the family’s kitchen table, creating Pick & Mix soya wax melts, topped with dried botanicals, that were sold at local fairs.
“It became obvious that we had something special. We would go to a fair, sell out, come home, make it all again, go to another show, sell out, and so on,” she told the newspaper’s Hannah Prevett.
Two years on, just prior to the outbreak of Covid, the company moved into an industrial unit in Lincolnshire. Far from holding the company back, the pandemic actually helped to boost sales, as people were based at home and “everybody wanted their houses to smell great,” explained Tara.
In 2023, the melts had become such a huge success, that they went on to win the Gift of the Year’s Home Fragrance category.
Today, in addition to wax melts, the company offers ethical, luxury hand poured home fragrance products across the board – candles, reed diffusers, fragrance oils, scented sachets, room sprays and bath and body – all hand crafted in Freckleface’s Lincolnshire workshop.
In addition to an established licensing partnership with the Royal Horticultural Society, Freckleface also unveiled a collaboration with iconic British brand Laura Ashley at Autumn Fair earlier this month.
The partnership features a botanical collection of ethical home fragrance products,inspired by wildflowers and English gardens.
All Freckleface products are vegan, cruelty-free, plastic-free, and locally sourced where possible.
Aside from being manufacturers, Freckleface also has a portfolio of five retail stores – presided over by Noah – the first opening in Stamford in 2020, (the year Tara’s husband Simon joined the business to run the manufacturing side). In addition to Stamford, other stores are located in Cambridge, Lincoln and York (x2), with a roll out of more shops in the pipeline for next year.
Asked by the newspaper for her best business tip, Tara stated: “If you’re not enjoying it, you’re not doing the right thing. You’ll never be successful at something if you don’t enjoy it.”
Visit www.frecklefacehomefragrance.com
Top: Tara Carlile-Swift, (left), co-founder of Freckleface, is shown at the launch of the company’s collaboration with British brand Laura Ashley atAutumn Fair. She is pictured with Laura Ashley’s licensing manager Emma Norris (second right) and marketing and licensing co-ordinator Lucy Woolaway (right).
