Candy House adds bath-and-body line

At the summer show, Candy House District Manager Bonnie Hicklin noticed Hershey’s line of Hershey’s Kisses-brand candles and was intrigued by the idea of chocolate-scented products.

“I thought, ‘This would be great – I wonder if we could carry this,’” she said. “I flipped it over to see where it was made, and it said Mostly Memories in Ozark, Missouri. I said ‘You have got to be kidding me.’”

The Joplin-based chocolate maker quickly partnered with Ozark-based Mostly Memories to produce a new line of chocolate-scented bath and body products.

Hicklin and Mostly Memories Vice President Jaime Jarvis designed the new products to smell like some of the candy shop’s most popular items, including mint meltaways, chocolate-covered strawberries, caramel apples and milk chocolate.

While the endeavor is a new idea for Candy House, Mostly Memories has been making candy-scented products for years. In addition to creating chocolate bath products for various chocolate companies nationwide, Mostly Memories also has the exclusive candle license for Hershey’s.

The Candy House line, which debuted on shelves in late October, includes lotions in 1- and 4-ounce bottles and chocolate-scented bubble bath in a 16-ounce old-fashioned glass milk bottle. The lotions sell for $2.95 and $7.95, respectively, while the bubble bath sells for $11.50.

The process, according to Jarvis, can be complicated – especially when trying to make skin products smell like recognizable food products.

“A lot of food smells – cinnamon, vanilla and chocolate – aren’t the best for lotions, because those fragrances are typically made for use in candles or waxes,” Jarvis said. “It takes a long time to formulate the fragrance that will be safe for skin applications.”

Hicklin said the new product line reaches a different audience than some of the company’s other offerings.

“I think it appeals to a younger demographic – the art has more bright colors, and kids can have fun with it. Little girls can put it in their purses and carry it around,” Hicklin said. “It’s something we’ve been having a lot of fun with.”

Hicklin said the reaction has been good to the new products, though she added the real indicator will be how successful the products are during the upcoming holiday season and Valentine’s Day.

As far as the future of the line, Hicklin and Jarvis said the sky is the limit for what can be offered; Jarvis said her company, through outside personal care product manufacturers, can create everything from lip gloss to chocolate scrubs to chocolate-scented soap.

“We just shipped them their first order a few weeks ago, so hopefully we’ll be looking at other things as well,” Jarvis said.