Harry Slatkin needs no introduction in retail. He and his wife, Laura, brought candles and the home fragrance category to life more than three decades ago after leaving jobs on Wall Street.
Slatkin said he got into the candle business by happenstance after his brother Howard, a Manhattan interior designer, asked him and Laura to take over his sideline candle business. The three formed Slatkin + Co. in 1991. The home fragrance brand was sold to Limited Brands in 2005 for an estimated $15 million. Harry Slatkin ran Bath & Body Works for more than six years, growing the business from $100 million in sales to more than $1 billion when he stepped down in 2012.
Slatkin said in a phone interview that the category was new when he entered the luxury home candle business. He said that in the past, if you wanted to find a quality, long-burn candle in retail you had to go to the eighth floor of Saks Fifth Avenue, and in the back corner on a dusty shelf you might find a candle.
Slatkin + Co. candles entered Saks, Ralph Lauren, Neiman Marcus, and a host of specialty design shops and upscale retailers on the ground floors as the category grew legs in the 1990s. He said they worked with master perfumers to create home fragrances that replicated real aromas. He said the cherry scent does not smell like cough drops but fresh bing cherries at a farmers market in Vermont. The lemons smell like the fresh lemons on the Amalfi Coast in the Mediterranean, not like furniture polish.
“The smell must be authentic, and I spend six to nine months developing each scent used in our candles and bath and body products with top perfumers in the world that can replicate scents that take you to the Bahamas for the weekend or scent your kitchen like lemon Jell-O cupcakes just coming out of the oven,” Slatkin said.
In 2017, Slatkin was contacted by QVC to sell directly to consumers through that home shopping platform. He developed the HomeWorx brand of home fragrance and self-care products that are still sold on that network. He said he became a fan of Sam Walton after listening to his biography on long drives to tape QVC shows in Pennsylvania from his home bases in New York and Florida.
“I have long been a fan of Sam Walton because his business ethos was akin to mine,” Slatkin said “One thing that stood out to me was the customer always rules. He listened to his employees and surrounded himself with top talent. He never stopped trying to improve the operation and learn something new. So when I got the chance to have Slatkin + Co. in Walmart, I was proud to do it.”
Slatkin developed the ScentWorx brand using his years of experience and eying the mass market for distribution. He coined the word “masstige” to describe his focus on bringing prestigious home and body fragrances to the masses. Using economies of scale and his fragrances, he boasts that he’s able to deliver a high-quality, long-burn candle at a price comparable to other brands on the Walmart shelf.
“I got so tired of going into mass retailers and seeing so many products made by corporations that just stuck a label and price on weak-scented candles and called it a day,” he said. “Walmart is a great retailer, and I was so impressed with Walton’s business savvy that I called them up and got a meeting with the home buyer.”
After meeting with Walmart in 2024, Slatkin said the retailer brought in 20 candle scents for stores, and more are sold online. The ScentWorx candles sell for $13.98 for a 14.5-ounce candle that offers 40 hours of burn time. He said the candle smells consistently through the burn with a self-extinguished cotton wick. The candles hit store shelves in January.
Walmart is not Slatkin’s first mass retail sales deal. The HomeWorx brand is sold by Ulta, Nordstrom, Kohl’s, and discounters like TJX. He developed Aroma Home for Home Depot.
By the end of 2023, Slatkin + Co. added 5,000 more stores with 3,000 more in 2024. By adding Walmart, CVS, and Dollar General, Slatkin + Co. grew revenue to nine figures by the end of 2024. Slatkin also owns the luxury home fragrance brand Nest, founded in 2008 by his wife Laura Slatkin. Nest’s annual revenue was estimated at $29.4 million last year, according to media reports.
Slatkin said he’s happy to bring home fragrances, bath and body products, and soon car fragrances to Walmart. His Dwell212 brand of bath and body products, which Slatkin designed with his Generation Z (people born in the late 1990s and early 2000s) daughter in mind, will hit select Walmart shelves in mid-February. The body washes, hand soaps and fragrance mists range in price from $8 to $13.
“The body wash, for example, is vegan, cruelty-free, aluminum-free, sulfate-free, paraben-free and SLS-free,” Slatkin said. “I created it with the younger consumer who wants to use a product daily, and there is a mental health element because scent is our most powerful sense. It changes the mood and feeds into the synapses in our body, changing our mood with it.”
Slatkin’s car fragrance products should be on Walmart shelves in March. He said he takes pride in developing fragrance products for mass retailers.
“When you get into our world, mass customers have worked very hard for that money,” Slatkin said. “But they also want and deserve quality products very similar to luxury brands but at a deep value.”
He said consumers are smart and informed about what they want, and if retailers don’t have what they want, it’s very easy for them to find it online. He also said he develops all the scents for his fragrance brands but outsources the production.
“I do not manufacture anything in China and will not,” he said. “My manufacturers are true professionals who use my formulations, and I oversee the entire process. I have an amazing team that works with us to bring our products to the market. My top fragrance developer has been with me for 32 years. We have a great passion for what we do, just like Sam Walton did.”
Slatkin said he burns his candles in his home and would not sell a product he didn’t use. He said the ScentWorx products in Walmart are made in the U.S. and Dominican Republic.
He said the on-shelf look and branding are important in grabbing first-time shoppers’ attention, but the quality of the burn and pricing is what gets them to come back.
Editor’s note: The Supply Side section of Talk Business & Politics focuses on the companies, organizations, issues and individuals engaged in providing products and services to retailers. The Supply Side is managed by Talk Business & Politics, and is sponsored by HRG.