Our Story So Far

Hi and welcome to our online store. It's great to see you here 😀

 Truly Personal was founded back in 2013 by me (Joy) and my husband (Simon).

 Being a stay at home Mum to two little ones whilst Simon was at work, I often made little things that friends and family kept telling me that I should sell. I had no idea about how to run a business, but had always wanted to be my own boss and so I took to a 5 year management accounting course (I look back now and think that maybe this was a little extreme but hey I learnt a lot!). So I was Mum in the day and student at night.

 After a lot of hard work, I passed the course and again I started making things. This time when friends said I should sell them, I knew exactly how to go about doing it and so I created our business from our back kitchen table with a £70 investment. I started with making an array of personalised gifts like chocolate bouquets, sweet cones, enchanted rose lights etc. They grew to be really popular but after 2 years of making them, I realised I wanted to make other things as I love learning new crafts but only had one pair of hands.

At this point, Simon made the scary decision to leave his job and join Truly Personal full time. I’d gotton extremely busy and I couldn’t keep up with orders and we both felt the timing was right. Plus he has always had a mind for puzzles and how things work and so he started working on designing in 2D. The designs he made were engraved and cut on a laser machine and again these became really popular.

 I wanted to add more to the range and so I started looking for fragrance oil suppliers for making my own candles and melts, as anything fragrance related excites me. We all have a scent that invokes a memory upon catching a sniff off it and I find this captivating. If I catch a whiff of Jasmine, it reminds me of my wedding day as I could smell the flowering Jasmine at the reception. However, I couldn’t find a good enough supplier that provided the right documentation, sent the goods out in a timely manner and were reliable enough to rely on. So I started investigating where I could have them manufactured instead.

 During my research days and one of the countless headaches I had when learning what an SDS sheet was, I had the light bulb idea of becoming that supplier I had been in search off. One that offers the correct documentation and makes it accessible instantly, sends the goods out in a timely manner and being reliable enough so that our customers can trust us, knowing that they can concentrate on running their own business without worrying when their order was going to be dispatched.

 So in late 2018 we took the plunge and teamed up with a UK fragrance house and started investing in fragrance oils. We have around 50 at the moment and there is not one that I have not tested nor disliked and many more are in the pipeline for 2020.

 Whilst on my fragrance oil travels, I discovered they could be used for so many other products other than candles and melts. I’d recently had an operation and was bed bound for 2 months and so during this time I started researching my new love, bath bombs. How to make one? How to make pretty coloured ones? How to make them float? How to make the water feel silky?

 Once back on my feet, I started testing, testing and more testing until I found what worked for me. During this, I suggested to Simon that he should have a go at making bath bomb moulds and so in early 2019 he started moving away from 2D designing and moving towards 3D designing instead. He has now created nearly 100 designs and they have proved to be popular, so much so, he doesn’t have time to 2D design anymore and we have had to scale that side of the business down to focus on our new ventures.

 We both feel we have found our passion and we love that one day we’ll see beautiful bath bombs, the next stunning wax melts and so on. We have just introduced snap bar silicone moulds to our range and we have given them a revamp for the wax world. We still have so many more ideas that one day will become available in our store. As always, we’ll be taking one step at a time and working on something new.

 We are so incredibly lucky to be doing what we love and we get to meet some incredibly talented makers. We love to see our customers’ creations that are made using our products and it’s a very proud moment for us. Not one day is the same, nor is one product made by a different creator and we love it.

 We look forward to seeing what 2020 brings.

 All the best,

 Joy x

 Last updated: 17/02/2020