Get Your Happy On..

        For local entrepreneur Travis Ferguson, the vision for Goombay Labs, the Bahamian scented candle manufacturer was birthed back in 2015. That vision slowly morphed into reality when the young entrepreneur suddenly found himself out of work a year later.

       “I took my severance pay and decided to take the risk and really pursue this full-time, having put so much time and energy into someone else’s dream and that’s what I did. Today, I have no regrets about my decision. I’m proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish,” says Travis, who acknowledges that there was ‘a lot of trial and error’ to get his product to the standard he wanted.

       Goombay Labs which seeks to create unique scents currently offers 8 oz candles in 10 different fragrances such as passion fruit and guava, pomegranate, Lucayan dream and vanilla hazelnut all of which can be purchased via the company’s web-site, which Travis designed himself. The company offers same day delivery to any residential or commercial address in Nassau and Paradise Islands and also ships to the family islands, the United States and Canada. The response, both local and international has been ‘incredible’ he says. “We have about 10 fragrances so far and we’re set to debut a new fragrance every month starting in June so that by the end of the year we should have about 15-16 fragrances,” says Travis.

         The candles are created from mixture of paraffin and soybean wax which he sources out of North Carolina. “The candles have a 36 hour burn time and there is no aroma degradation. We don’t want to go bigger than the 8oz candles yet as it’s a fairly good size which allows us to retain customers,” says Travis who notes that adding other products to the company’s offering is in the works.

            There’s a ton of detail’ that goes into making a quality product, Travis notes.  “One of my company’s promises is that we never comprise cost for quality. A lot of small businesses, the minute the get a high demand is when they start to cut corners and that when you pretty much sign the death warrant for your business. I really take pride in being hands-on  so when you buy my product you’re really supporting work by my own hands, you’re supporting a persons,  family and that’s really the message that I want to put out there. When you support small business you’re really supporting someone who has taken their time to make something special and that’s a precious commodity that is deserving of the price. A lot of people fuss small business over pricing but would spend hundreds of dollars on an item made by a machine.”

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