Yankee Candle Company - History

History

Yankee Candle Company was started in South Hadley, Massachusetts when Michael Kittredge, originally from Holyoke, Massachusetts created his first scented candle Christmas 1969 from melted crayons as a gift for his mother. Neighbors began expressing interest in buying his creations, and Kittredge began producing them in larger quantities. The company itself was founded with help from Donald MacIver and Susan Obremski, who were high school friends with Kittredge. MacIver helped fund the start-up business with earnings from his part-time job. Candle production grew considerably after Obremski's father devised a "heated room", which enabled cost-saving liquid wax deliveries at the first factory site in Holyoke. Obremski's invention of a turntable taper wheel allowed production to double, while at the same time decreasing the need for more labor hours. In 1975, she managed the first Yankee Candle Shop located where the Village Commons, South Hadley now stands.

The company slowly expanded and moved to South Deerfield in 1983.

After a cancer scare in 1993, Kittredge started handing the company over to a friend and employee. In 1998, he sold the company to New York-based private equity company Forstmann Little for $500 million. Forstmann took the company public in 1999, and in 2001, hired Craig Rydin as a CEO. Rydin launched a major advertising campaign and the line was picked up by mass retailers Linens-N-Things and Bed, Bath and Beyond, pushing sales to their highest levels yet. Kittredge remains the company's chairman emeritus.

During the summer of 2006, Yankee Candle purchased Illuminations, a Petaluma, California-based, multi-channel retailer of high quality candles and home accessories. Although the two companies were similar, the names were separated, with Illuminations being aimed at a different demographic. The Illuminations brand and web store were phased out in early 2009.

On February 6, 2007, the company was acquired by the private equity group of Madison Dearborn Partners LLC for approximately $1.6 billion.

Read more about this topic:  Yankee Candle Company

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)

    I assure you that in our next class we will concern ourselves solely with the history of Egypt, and not with the more lurid and non-curricular subject of living mummies.
    Griffin Jay, and Reginald LeBorg. Prof. Norman (Frank Reicher)

    One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.
    Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)