goodMRKT Live
goodMRKT Live
From Music to Fragrance: Steve Soderholm's Journey with Ranger Station
Ever found yourself captivated by the soothing flicker of a candle flame and the evocative scent it carries? Join us, as we engage in an illuminating chat with Steve Soderholm, the visionary founder of Ranger Station. In this thrilling conversation, Steve recounts his unique journey from music to fragrance, and how his love for mixology and cocktail culture informed his adventure into candle-making.
We shine a light on the commendable philanthropic efforts of Ranger Station. Steve takes us through their meaningful partnerships with Love One and Porter's Call, organizations providing vital medical care and mental health support. Learn how Ranger Station has leveraged its platform to back these causes, and hear about Steve's creative journey in crafting custom fragrances. From creating a unique perfume for his wife to developing a line of Christmas fragrances, this episode offers you an exciting peek into Steve's creative process and dedication to his craft.
Listen in as we hear Steve's story of good.
Welcome to season two of the Good Market Podcast. I'm your host, harry Cunningham. Each month, we hear from good people with great products, supporting exceptional causes and making incredible impacts on communities around the world. Join us now as we hear another good story about impact that's happening right near you. Hey, everybody, an exciting time for me and we're here in November and we're wrapping up season two. We're pretty close to wrapping up season two of the Good Market Live podcast and I'm excited to bring on one of my really good friends, steve Soderholm, the founder of Ranger Station. Ranger Station we'll talk a little bit more about how it got started, but Ranger Station has been with us since the beginning, so we're excited to talk about one of our founding brands and sort of the perfect time of the year to talk about scents and flavors of the season, which certainly tie themselves nicely back to the Ranger Station line. So, steve, welcome to the Good Market Live podcast. Great to have you here. Wow, thanks for having me, harry. It's an exciting time for me. I mean, we've talked a lot, but I'm excited to share our conversations that we've had with our listeners, so let's just jump right in.
Speaker 1:Steve, I think when we found you it was three plus years ago, almost four years ago, and I didn't know you at the time we saw your brand sitting next to one of our other founding brands, abel, in Atlanta at the show, and I was kind of intrigued. I saw these like cool glasses and I'm a little bit of a candle fan myself, so I saw these cool glasses and then I went over and I heard the story and I was like this like we gotta figure this out. This is like this. Is there's something here? So, steve, I don't want to take your thunder, I want you to love to kind of share your story, how you got started and all the, all the fun, gory details.
Speaker 2:Oh man, yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll try to do it in a way that that spares you too many of the things, cause even once you, once you guys found us, we were I mean, that was what'd you say? I'm maybe three, four years ago. Yeah, rainier station's been around for eight years. So we were, we were hashed in and out, you know trial and error for four years before that. So, but yeah, it's been, it's been amazing. I so we're based in Nashville and I ended up in Nashville 14 years ago almost almost 15 years ago now, back in 2009 and grew up in Minnesota, but I came down here to pursue music, like so many people do, like so many people come to Nashville to do, and somehow found my way from music to fragrance.
Speaker 2:Once I graduated college I moved straight into touring full time. That was, that was the dream ever since I was a kid. You know, I wanted to be a drummer and when I was a senior in high school I had a. I had a drum professor, steve Gould. Shout out to Steve, he's just absolutely incredible. But I was studying with him and he one day kind of sat me down and told me if I wanted to pursue drumming as a career, that was a thing I could actually do up until then. It was kind of one of those things where I was like this is, yeah, every kid dreams of this, but nobody actually ever does it, right, right. So I was like all right, kind of like the next day decided that that was, that was the career I wanted to pursue, and decided that Nashville was going to be probably the best place to do that.
Speaker 2:My mom grew up in Nashville, so I've always had family here, always had family in Nashville and it just made you know, kind of made sense to do that came down to Nashville and studied studied music business at Belmont and but at the end of the day what I really really wanted to do was was playing music and played music live. So upon graduation I jumped straight into doing that full time playing drums. For about four and a half years that's all I did was I was just a road dog and it was you know living life on the road.
Speaker 2:I was never home and I loved it. I absolutely loved it. Super creative, just let truly live in the dream got to travel the world. It was such an incredible time. And then the only thing that I didn't love about touring was it's a really interesting schedule. That would be gone for months at a time, which I loved, but then when I was at home, it was I was always home for extended periods of time as well. When you're home, you don't really have that much going on. When you're on the road, you're working, yeah. When you're at home, you're just waiting for the next time that, the next tour, the next time you leave, and as, as you know you're asleep, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, yeah, it was. It was kind of one of those things where the first day home, I'd get home and I'd just be like, oh man, I'm so tired, like I've got a whole month just to rest. This is amazing, you know and then on day two I'd wake up and be like what am I doing with my life?
Speaker 1:I'm really bad at sitting still.
Speaker 2:I need to be moving and doing things always, so we'd get like a day of rest and then be ready for the next thing. So inevitably I just started doing like all I mean you know just there's all kinds of different things I was always doing. I was, I got it super into super to woodworking for a little bit, which was fun, and got rich, started getting really, really into mixology and the cocktail culture and everything, and a big part of that was actually that I was, I was gone all the time. I wouldn't see my friends. For extended periods of time, for really long periods of time, I wouldn't see my friends and then all of a sudden, you know, I was home for a while, I'd have all my friends over to the house and I would, I would make cocktails for everybody.
Speaker 2:That was kind of like my thing that I would do. And the the other thing that I always do is have candles burning and there was just something that I knew about having candles going, that that created a cool space for people. And I didn't. I didn't know anything about fragrance at the time, but there was something in me that just felt like, oh man, this was like subconsciously, I just knew having fragrance a part of part of people coming over just created a cool experience for people.
Speaker 2:So I was like All right, let's run with this. And again, at the time I had way more time than money, because I was a musician.
Speaker 2:But I was developing this expensive candle habit because I love burning candles at my house. So I, just one day I was just sitting on the couch kind of bored out of my mind because I, you know, had a couple more weeks till I was back on the road and ended up just deciding, like you know what, I'm going to learn how to make my own candles because why not? I've got the time to do it. And still there was no intention of turning it into anything because it was. I mean, it was just like a passion project for me. I still had the touring, was still the career. So I yeah, I just kind of dove head first into making candles, had no idea what I was doing Run out to like the local art supply store by some wax and or like Amazon Prime Prime.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this was what?
Speaker 2:this was 20. This is probably 2014. So I just got an Amazon Prime and cool, I was like I can find anything on there. So I literally just you know two days, shipped a bunch of candle wax and candle fragrance and all this stuff and had a little double boiler going on on my stove top and it was. It was thinking back now it's. You know, I mean I still, I always say I still don't really know what I'm doing, but then I really really didn't know what I was doing and we just melt the wax down right on my stove top and that's cool and add oil to it and stuff, and so, yeah, just that. And that's how I started getting into candles and fragrance was I just wanted? I just started making candles for when I would have people over to my house and then fast forward a little bit. I've been doing that for about a year and then I was still too worried full time I'd be taking candles on the road, burning candles on the bus, which the bus drivers hated.
Speaker 1:I feel like that's totally safe, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they were like, yeah, you definitely can't do that. And I was like, well, I'm just not going to tell you that I'm doing it and I'll just you know, I'll ask for forgiveness, not permission, on that one. But I was like, oh, I just kept. I kept doing the candle thing so, and I fell more and more in love with it. So we made a website and I, at the just previously to this, I loved, or I had been living in an old ranger station and, and that's so I kind of always had this name ranger station, like flowing around in my mind.
Speaker 2:So I was like boom, stick that name on it.
Speaker 1:Was. That was outside of Nashville, in Nashville.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's in Nashville. So where I'm at right now is our 12th South Store. So 12th Avenue South. If you keep going down, if you keep going south, it turns into granny white and the ranger station is right right off of that's great white. It's still there. The guy that lives next door still owns it, so nobody will ever tear it down. I've tried to buy it from a multiple times and he's like no, I'm holding on to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he just wants to keep your eye on that. Because, he knows.
Speaker 2:I mean at this point now, especially in Nashville, it's the prices have gone so insane he could sell it for a lot for some developer to come in and put a you know, make mention on it. But yeah, so it was like and I just had so many incredible memories at at the ranger station, as we called it, so that name kind of stuck and so that kind of had this whole side to go and like did our first Christmas where we were shipping out, you know I think we sold, you know probably 300 candles or something like that first holiday season All to you know, my mom and her friends probably, and a couple of my buddies back home I was probably given away more candles and we were actually selling at the time.
Speaker 2:But yeah, then I then I kind of got to the point where, you know, I was about to, I knew I was about to propose, I was about to engage and I had kind of reached that point with touring where I was like man, I did it.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad that I did it, but I'm ready for the next thing and like was super grateful that I had had done it and pursued it and tried it and just had still have so many incredible memories from that time.
Speaker 2:So, but I just knew that it wasn't the thing that I was supposed to do forever, especially, you know, with with thinking about getting married and starting a family soon. Again, I was never home, so I was thinking about what was next. So I kind of made this thing, kind of I definitely made this decision of him to step away from touring, but I had no idea what's next, literally that, and the things that were going through my mind, you know, are they're talking to my dad and grandfather all the time about you know what, what could my next career move kind of be, you know, and where it's like, oh, I could go be a bank analyst or like, do something of finance or do which, which is all that stuff is super interesting to me, but it was looking back down like this is hilarious that those are the things that I was thinking about doing.
Speaker 1:I mean just in a short time. I've known you. I, if you walked in in a quarter zip and a blue shirt and pleated khakis, I'd be like who's that dude? Yeah, that would never be the case. That would never be the case. I would never have fit in.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But so, yeah, I was kind of in the space where I was like I had stepped away from touring intentionally to figure out what was next. But I wasn't sure what that was. But I had ranger station, still considering it a total side gig. I was just like, hey, man, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna use this to fill my time until I figure out what that next step is and inevitably just delve in fully headfirst and into super cool, just the possibilities, right, and I had more time on my hands than ever.
Speaker 2:So and then, you know, I got engaged to my now wife, jordan, and she she's been a part of it since the beginning. Now she's full time at ranger station. But then she was out, she was able. Then she was a fashion director at able at the time and she was pushing me to like really do this thing. So we just, we just kind of hunkered down or like let's, let's figure out where the sink could go. And I graduated from my stove top pretty quickly to my garage, or I should say my, my roommate's garage. Shout out to Nathan Spicer, he, you know I probably owe him a pot or two of cookware that was ruined in my in my couple candles to go with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I moved into the garage and then ended up getting out small little studio space where I could I mean, on a, on a good day, I could probably make 200 candles in that space.
Speaker 1:And it's just been far cry from the 300 you sold the first Christmas. I mean that's pretty impressive.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes. So I was like, oh this, like I felt like, man, this is where this is it, we're crushing it like I'm doing 200 candles a day. This is wild, it's like that Spent about a year and a half probably in that space and then then got to a really, really cool point in ranger stations time, where we couldn't keep up with production because the brain was growing and but at the same time, you know, we're fully self funded. So I you know I didn't have a bunch of capital to go get a warehouse and get equipment and get a bunch of staff. I would have been super over leveraged if I were to do that. So, partnered with thistle farms here in Nashville, which is an incredible, incredible organization Please, anybody who's listening, check out what they do for sure.
Speaker 1:And we've actually had, and we've had Katrina from thistle farms on the podcast previously too, so they can see, amazing, that's perfect, yeah, big thistle farms fans.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they, they're just incredible, incredible people and their mission and everything they do I could not have more respect for and so got connected with them, probably through able I can't remember exactly how we got connected, but that's probably what it was.
Speaker 1:So, over there, when you got connected with this firms, yeah, yeah, he was such a great guy too.
Speaker 2:Incredible, absolutely incredible. So they and they were making their own candles. So we kind of approached them with could you guys kind of supplement our manufacturing? And it was an awesome partnership. They made a lot of our candles for probably about two years, wow, and over that course of that two years it was a really, it was really incredible.
Speaker 2:It like helped both of our brands grow and one day, one day I remember calling them up to be like hey, you know, we need more candles. And they were like both of our brands had had grown so much that they had to say no. They were like hey, this is, this has to be the last run, if you will, and just be in. That like that was such an incredible place for us to both be in, because their business had grown so much, and so had ours, that they just couldn't keep doing it all. And at that point we were then in a position to go find a warehouse by the equipment and hire a staff. And that's true, that was probably. That was probably five years ago now, four years ago now. And we so we've been in our current space since then and we've again just continued to grow. We started it, we've got two warehouses.
Speaker 1:It's amazing still to me that you guys pump out the amount of stuff that you do, because it's still not a huge space, but it's like you're super efficient and yeah, and I think actually, since maybe the last time you saw we might, I think we got the warehouse right next to us to we have.
Speaker 2:But yeah, we're able to. I mean thinking back to that little studio that I had where I was able to make 200. Now we're, if we're running at max capacity we can make, we can make 1800 candles a day now.
Speaker 1:Amazing. So it's just tons of wax equals 1800 candles. Gosh, I don't even know. There's it's.
Speaker 2:I mean all I know when we, when we order wax it's, it's intense, like it's like literally pallets of wax show up. Yeah, just pallets of wax, you know, and they are just, they're, they're super heavy, these huge pallets. It's, it's so funny.
Speaker 1:While we're on wax to, I think, important part of your brand, to tell us a little bit about your wax, because that's that's a big deal Like it's not just like regular old. Joshua wax yeah.
Speaker 2:No, we're yeah, we're super particular about all the elements that go into our candles and especially the wax. So we use we use a soy based wax and there's there's tons of different waxes out there. There's 100% soy wax, there's paraffin wax, which is your kind of like the 80 candle bath and body works, kind of your traditional candle wax, paraffin wax. There's beeswax, there's apricot wax. There's all these things out there. So we've spent a lot of time figuring out what's the best kind of like, what is the best type of wax to use, and from when I first started, I was using 100% soy wax and we've moved away from that into this soy based high veggie blend wax, just because it, which has what that means, is there's.
Speaker 2:There's some other waxes in there that help was like stability stabilizers, because 100% soy wax, while is very sustainable and well, actually we're doing the point where it's less sustainable, but it's it's not super stable in that it just doesn't burn really consistently. So you can run into when you hear about quote unquote exploding candles and things like that. A lot of times it's just because with 100% soy wax you can't get a really consistently performing and safe burning candle and everything we do at Ranger Station needs to fall under being clean and being safe and being sustainable. So that's why we use the soy based wax that we do, which just allows us to do our super extensive wick and burn testing and have a ton of confidence in, like, what we have tested. That is what. That is what, like, the customers and good market and everybody will actually have that like, they'll have that same experience that we, that we did at our testing and we can't you can't do that with with 100% soy wax.
Speaker 1:So when, when you started, when we first found you, I think you had, like I mean, we're talking about this three or four. You had a pretty tight collection. What was the first cent you created?
Speaker 2:Oh, glad you asked the first.
Speaker 1:Well, I the first, I'll ask that two ways what's the first sense you created? And if it's not still in the line, what's the first thing you created that's still in the line?
Speaker 2:It's well. There was definitely some sense I created that were no good and never made it into the line. So I don't remember what the first set I created was, but I do remember that it wasn't any good and it never went anywhere. But the first set that I created, that was good. We do still have in the line, and it's our leather and pine candle. We have it in a perfume as well, read diffuser. And yeah, it's just like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we got it in a lotion and it's kind of taken on a life of its own, which is cool and it just there. It was inspired by my time. Oh, look, you got it right there, get it right here. See, you got it right there. But yeah, it was inspired by my time growing up in Minnesota. My grandparents live in Grand Marais, minnesota, which is on Lake Superior, about 30 miles from the Canadian border, so way, way up there, cool. I grew up just outside of Minneapolis but I'd spend a lot of my summers and winters and well, really, I'd just spend time throughout the year up in up in Grand Marais and that whole part of Minnesota is called the boundary waters canoe area. It's largely state forest, so I just I'd spent so much time out there with my family in working, you know, fishing, ice fishing, going out to the cabin, or, you know, my grandfather always had a cool. Some of the projects were cool, some of them weren't.
Speaker 2:But, there was always some project to do, so I just have. I spent a lot of time out out in the woods in northern Minnesota working and that it's all coniferous forest up there, so pine trees everywhere. Yeah, and we were always working with. You know our, you know our red wig, iron Ranger leather boots and leather gloves and everything.
Speaker 1:So it was an easy one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was like that that inspired that leather and pine candle. And then here we are, so it's it's kind of taken on a life of its own now, which is cool, but yeah, it's still still in the line, which has been amazing and still one of our. It's probably, depending on the time of year, it's always like our second or third top seller.
Speaker 1:Very cool, one of the things that we you and I have not talked about before, but I've noticed it before about you a lot, and anybody that might follow your Instagram or Jordan's Instagram or listen to you talk will know that family is clearly a very important part of who you are and what you do, and I think it's so interesting to hear you talk about the line and how much you have inspiration from parents, grandparents, where they live, where they were. Your whole life is really a part of it, and it's wonderful that Jordan gets to work with you. You know what? I met you guys first. She wasn't working with you, so I was excited to hear her go over there, but there's also somebody else that works with you. That's kind of a little fun. Trivial part of Steve is you have a brother that works with you too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and not just a brother, but an identical twin brother, which makes it hard on some of the other people that we work with.
Speaker 1:So is this actually John telling the story, or is it really you?
Speaker 2:No, it's me, I probably this is Steve.
Speaker 2:This is Steve, but depending on the time of year, like you know, in our facial, hair and haircut and everything it's like, sometimes it's easy to tell us apart and sometimes it's not. John had a big mustache for a super long time and then shaved it, so now it's now we look quite a bit alike and have similar style, of course, and everything. So, but yeah, so John and I yeah, identical twins, so obviously, done our whole lives together, moved down to Nashville together. He was in music as well for a super long time as a bass player. I was a drummer, he was a bass player, so we were this kind of twin rhythm section which we actually didn't play together as much as I wish we had. We, we, I wish we could have played more together than we did.
Speaker 2:There's still time, you never know. There's still time. Yeah, yeah, we're, we're, we're actually we're talking about like man. We just, we just want to play like a show. So we're like trying to we're bounce around ideas of like man. Let's just do like one show, one show in that show.
Speaker 2:Get all the buddies that used to be on the road that aren't anymore Give me a knockout of show.
Speaker 2:We get down there for that. Yes, so, but yeah so he's. He was in music at the same time as me. We joke this is his third time at ranger station, cause when I was, when I was in that tiny studio it was over in German town he I brought him in to help me pour candles. You know that first holiday season, and that was his first time, and then he was while this was doing our manufacturing. He was on board helping with some operations, things, and then he, then he went back on tour and then, about two years ago now, he came back on board full time running all of our production in warehouse.
Speaker 2:And so he's, he is, he is the last stop when it comes to making up all of our products. He is, he is the brains behind making sure that every single product that makes it out the door is exactly what, what we intended it to be. So, and I think that's a huge, huge reason why, it's why there's we have so much faith in in our products, you know, consistency and quality being being what it is, cause he, he, cares so much about. You know, if we're, if we're, testing a leather and pine candle for ourselves, you know, harry, when you that leather pine candle you have on your desk is smells exactly the same and performs exactly the same, and just as safe as the one that we we have.
Speaker 1:So so I want to talk about that. Yeah, it's a family affair. I'm glad you said performs, because I think that's that's. I want you to talk about the performance of the candle a little bit. There's, there's, there's a dual purpose to the candle, right? It's not just about burning a candle, and I think that's such a unique, special thing for your brand. So I don't want to again, I don't want to steal your thunder. I'd like you to do it, but there's so much that I learned from you about the little things that people probably aren't even thinking about. I'd love to kind of dig into that candle a little bit, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think, like with the candles specifically, there's a few things with it, so it's the candle kind of has two lives and the first so I'll start with the first one and that's that's as a candle itself. And we do, we we've done a ton of research and, on our own, testing, trial and error, through you know what, what, what makes the best performing candle, and one of the big things that we landed on is all of our candles have two wicks in it instead of one wick, and there's most candles out there, especially the size of ours. Most have just just one one wick in it, and it's probably for visual purposes. I'm not, I'm not sure why that ended up being the case, but at the end of the day, what we found is one wick just isn't enough to capture a full candle, the full space of the candle, and that's why I mean, if you go on the on Instagram or TikTok or anything like that, there's all these hacks out there for how to prevent your candle from tunneling, which is where it burns down the center, and there's all this wax on the side, or so if you've got a single wick, it's just you end up with a ton of tunneling and you need a really, really, really large wick. So you get this really big flame and that usually means a lot of sooting and that's where you get like a bunch of black soot on the inside of the glass.
Speaker 2:So by doing two small wicks, you have you have two smaller flames. You're getting incredible fragrance throw because you have two flames instead of one. And the thing that's super cool about doing the two smaller wicks is you don't the candle's not going to tunnel and you're going to get a very minimal sooting, if any at all, and so you basically get a candle that burns really really evenly and clean through the life of the candle. You're not leaving any wax left over on the outside. You're not getting a bunch of big old mushrooms on top of the wicks, carbon buildup or like a bunch of black inside the wax.
Speaker 2:So and the good news there is because then, once the candle is finished but actually before I even get to that the other thing that we do is we use a very high fragrance load, which means we put a lot of fragrance into the candle and we're actually actually to the point where, if we put more fragrance in, the wax probably wouldn't hold it Well. So not all candles are created equal. We use about. We use about double the amount of fragrance that your kind of traditional candles use, and the reason we do that is just just so that you get better performance out of it.
Speaker 1:So is that why you can smell it so easily, if it's not burning?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So when it's not burning, you've got your cold thrill, and then when it's burning, you've got one of the things I found like Nashville is one of my favorite scents, in addition to leather and pine, and I actually like Nash. I like to burn Nashville for a short time and then blow it out and get kind of the after smell. It's amazing, but it actually it's like. For me it's it's even more pleasant than having the candle burning Not that there's anything wrong with burning the candle, but it's like how many candles actually smell better when you blow them out than they do in the burning. So it's kind of a cool thing.
Speaker 2:I don't know if that was intentional or if that was accidental.
Speaker 1:But it's kind of what it's intentional that we want.
Speaker 2:I mean it's. It's intentional where we want this. We want our candles to be things that we want them to last when we want them to throw fragrance. Really well, right, you want it to fill a room, so it's yeah, you've been burning it for a couple hours, you can blow it out and you're still going to be able to still it. That is definitely intentional. And just that high fragrance blow makes it so that I mean, you can set one of our candles unlit in like a small room, like an office or a bathroom or something like that, and theoretically you could never light it and you just that cold throw that that rim's going to smell good.
Speaker 1:But we definitely want you to burn your candle because, yeah, but I would recommend lighting it when you have people over the house and and everything so and then.
Speaker 2:So once the candles burnt, once, once you're all the way down, you've got a tiny little little bit of wax left at the bottom. We've done this really cool thing with our candles where you know it takes on the second life, and that is as a cocktail glass. And where that came from was pretty simply two things. One, whenever I would burn a candle and I would finish it. It's just such a bummer when you have, when you just kind of take that candle glass and you throw it away. You know, so I was even before I started making candles.
Speaker 2:I was thinking of ways that I could repurpose those glasses because I wanted to use them for something I didn't want to just toss in the recycling or in the trash. And then again I just wanted to. And then again, at the same time that I was getting into making candles, I was also getting very into making cocktails. So I had all kinds of cocktail glasses everywhere and with. I didn't really even mean to do this, but when I was making candles for the first time on my stove top, all my cocktail glasses were like right there up in front of me. So I was like, oh, I'll just pour my candle into the cocktail glass you know.
Speaker 2:And then what? After I burnt it, I was like, well, I don't, I'm not gonna throw it away. It's like, yeah, clean it out the shoes you can. Yeah, there's a couple of different ways you can clean out the candle, but it's, it's pretty simple and easy to clean out. And then you've got a. You've got a cocktail glass to use. And we took it even one step further, where every single one of our candle fragrances we have either chosen a classic cocktail for, or, if we couldn't find a classic cocktail that paired well with the fragrance, we created a cocktail for it. So there's actually a cocktail pairing for every fragrance and it's literally meant to be enjoyed together, like that cocktail is meant to be enjoyed while burning fragrance. And the recipe for the cocktail comes right inside the box with the candle and everything too. So we've got we've got a bunch of customers out there that have really awesome collections of reinterstation glasses. That would be me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Harry's one of them. We have a collection. In fact, we just cleaned one out over the weekend. So, now we have an uneven number, so I got to keep leather and pine bird.
Speaker 2:Oh, you got to keep going. You got to keep going. That's the fun. Keep the even numbers. I like the numbers.
Speaker 1:So talk about a lot about the candles and well, I want to jump back into fragrance in a little bit, but I want to talk about. You talked about family. We talked about how important family is to you, and there's a couple of organizations that you guys have partnered with that are pretty powerful organizations, one of them obviously very close to your roots there in Nashville and your music roots, but then the other, loved one, international, is obviously a much broader, much broader Cuz. I love for you to talk about why both of those are important. You can you pick which you want to talk about first. I think they're both really amazing stories.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely I'll start with. Well, yeah, I don't even know which one to start with. I'll start with love one. We start. We started working with love one maybe two years ago, I think. We just got connected to them through through some mutual friends and they they are an organization that operates in Uganda that provides life saving medical care to children in Uganda. We take it, so we, we take for granted how easy it is to get medical care here in the US. You know, I mean, it's that time of year, so, like both my kids have been sick on and off for months, it feels like right, but it's like, oh, we can just take it back and forth right, yeah, they do, they do.
Speaker 2:And then the second, they get better. Jordan or I get it. But yeah, it's like we take it for granted how easy it is for us to to how to go get medical care in Uganda. A lot of the times they just don't have that, and so what love one does is they they. They actually have a center there where they're able to. They've got doctors on staff. They're able to rehabilitate kids. They're able to pay for actual hospital care for those kids. They do a lot of outreach in the community and they have the end goal of always making sure that they, whenever possible, they're able to really reunite those kids with their families, which is really incredible they're.
Speaker 2:they're. They're building a brand new, much larger facility right now where they're going to be able to service many, many more kids, which is incredible. They even do outpatient care. So they're going into families homes to care for kids and just, I mean, I encourage anybody listening to go check out what they're doing they're. The stories are just just absolutely incredible. So we've done, we've done candles for them and we're a portion of those. Those proceeds go back to funding that medical care for those kids. And stay tuned because we've got some really really cool things coming up with with love one in less than a month now. So so keep your eyes peeled for that, because there's some really really cool things coming Again. That will that will be supporting, supporting everything love one is doing.
Speaker 1:And then she shout out to them. Yeah, he shout out to love one for sure, and I love the one you did last year with the Red Cross on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there, yeah, the can Yep the love one candle.
Speaker 1:So then Porter's call I think, just to jump over to that one is not something I was familiar with until actually in another. One of our partners, warner Music and Nashville, works very closely with them too, and I was just reading about Porter's call and saw both of your names that I was super impressed with it. But I love for you to talk a little bit about Porter's call and the importance of the work they're doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, porter's calls are absolutely incredible. They the way that I heard about Porter's call initially was was just through some friends being positively impacted by by Porter's call and at the end of the day, what they are is a service for, for touring musicians and families and artists to to get mental health services. And it was started by this incredible man, al Andrews, and they he just had this heart for for artists and musicians because they it's such an interesting place to be and I was never an artist, I was always. I was always. You know, I was always on the drums backing up and artists.
Speaker 2:But when you're the artists, you're, you're you, you are your brand and also you are, you're pouring into people every night, concerts, through your music. You're, you're giving, you're giving, you're pouring into people. But there's such a unique uniqueness to that life in that you are so often just very, very. You know it's very exhausting and you may not have a lot of, you know, people pouring back into you as you're giving so much. So Al saw this need in the space, so he started Porter's call I can't remember how long ago, but it's it's been around for a super long time and just to provide free mental health services, to, to these, to these artists who are just giving so much of themselves and interesting that you bring that up.
Speaker 1:I think it's so so many people don't think about. You know, when artists write music so frequently, it's writing from a place in their heart, that something that's impacted them. And it's not always happy, right. Many times it's not totally. And to have to relive that every single time you perform a song or every single time you perform a show with no support on the back end, we listen to a song and we turn it off and turn on the next song.
Speaker 1:If you have to sing the same song about something that was so impactful in your life over and over and over again, it could be pretty tough and it's beautiful to hear about an organization like this that actually is thinking that way, versus those of us that are just listening to the music on the other end and enjoying it. And Adele comes to mind very quickly, and I know she's not a country artist, but she's very open about every single one of her albums has been about a part of her life and they're not always happy times, right, but yeah music is amazing.
Speaker 2:I mean, music is so powerful because it is so personal and, yeah, so it is a there's. Music is a very unique career path, for sure, and Porter's call has just done such an incredible job of providing services to artists and they're only getting more and more influx of people who want to utilize those services and we, we want to do everything we can to help them be able to provide those free services, which just means them being able to hire on more porters. There that their therapists are called are called porters and the the reason behind that is because porters were, you know way, way back when, when you were traveling you know by by photo, by horse or anything, when you'd go into you know a lot of times like monasteries and stuff like that, where you could stay. Tonight, there was a porter at the front and their, their job was to kind of be your guide and in help, help you out, kind of like, on your journey. Very cool, and that's where the name Porter's call comes from. Sorry, al, if I butchered that. Please, and everybody, listen and go, go, go, check out Porter's call and they will do a much better job of describing it than than I just did, but they one of their, one of their porters, chad, reached out to us just because he was a fan of Ranger Station and always had Ranger Station candles burning in his, in his office when he was in sessions and and that turned into us doing some custom candles with them and which is grown into this really cool partnership where we do.
Speaker 2:Because my background's in music and, being in Nashville, we have so many ties to the, the music space and so just over the years we've been starting to do more and more music collaborations with with different artists. We've done that. They and Camino know a con need to breathe. We've done all these these cool collaborations where we we create fragrances or candles for for these artists, because, at the end of the day, perfume and candles is storytelling and these artists are out there telling these incredible stories. So it's really cool to be able to come alongside them and and tell that story in another medium just through fragrance.
Speaker 2:But we've we've been able to develop this program Sorry, excuse me develop this program called features, which is where we we do partner with these artists. In a portion of all those sales of those specific partnerships goes back to support porters call Very cool and everything that they're doing so that they can hire more porters and provide more, more services. But yeah, mental health definitely has a. Really I care like so much about that space and I mean part of the reason I probably got into fragrances is just the power it has to. You know, our roma therapy is a real thing where fragrance has such a power over us in a really positive way, where it can relax us and just create cool experiences. So I really care about that space and just so happy that we can create these really cool candles that tin benefit porters call as well.
Speaker 1:It's great, and you know speaking about that roma therapy piece. Obviously, if people don't know, you've grown much, much broader than just candles. You're doing personal fragrance now. You're doing soaps and lotions now. And I think you talked a bit about custom. Somebody could even work with you to come in and create their own custom fragrance. That's something you do every day but certainly something you can do. But this year you created a very special custom fragrance that people can buy if they want to, one that you created for Jordan.
Speaker 2:I did. So, my wife even.
Speaker 1:Jordan stories.
Speaker 2:That's one of my favorite Steven Jordan stories. But yeah, so my wife Jordan is, ironically, you know, working for a fragrance company. She is not super into fragrance and what I mean by that is if she is commenting on a fragrance, it is usually not a good thing. She's very sensitive to smells in that way. So last year, last October, we were, we were doing a really cool hotel prod project over in the UK and we were walking around London one day, just walking around the streets in Mayfair, and she, she just stops and she goes. She commented on a fragrance that she smelled. I mean, we're just walking down the street and she smells something. And I don't know if somebody was wearing perfume or if it was like from coming out of a store or or what it was, but she smelled something and she was like whatever that is smells amazing. And I was like, well, I took a you know, quick, mental, factory note of that, because she never says that, yeah, and we were in London for a couple of days and we smelled it a couple more times, still not sure exactly where it was or where I mean where it was coming from, but she kept commenting on it. So that was in October of last year so just over a year now that that happened and then fast forward to March of this year.
Speaker 2:Jordan's birthday was coming up and I didn't know what to do for Jordan's birthday and but I was doing. I dove into a season of exploring a lot of fragrance from materials, just individual, individual raw materials if he and I was smelling so many and like that's what's behind me are all these individual set notes and I'm just going down the line, spell it, a bunch of stuff. And then I, and then I smelled on a blotter. I called this raw material and I was like, immediately, the power of scent is so crazy. But the moment I spelled it, I was right back in London walking around the streets of Mayfair with Jordan and I was like, so media was just like this, this fragrance note was one of the main notes in whatever perfume or store or whatever it was that we smelled.
Speaker 2:So I went on this mission of like, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to make a perfume for Jordan that's centralized around this fragrance note, because I know that she really likes it, and what better gift to give your wife than than a custom perfume, right? So what, what? There's nothing more nerve wracking than giving somebody who doesn't wear perfume a perfume for their birthday. So so I just kind of like channeled like everything I knew about Jordan and and brought it into this perfume and just it's meant to be a perfume, that's. It's always a perfume for people who will like. It's definitely a perfume for people who love perfume, right, but it's also for people who maybe don't love perfume because they're they give them headaches and because their perfumes can get like really quote unquote perfumey. Yeah, and Jordan's perfume is not that.
Speaker 1:It is, and I think you know it's actually 100% accurate on that, though, because my wife is much like yours and that she is not like if she smells scent. She's kind of scent averse, if you will. But she loves Jordan's perfume and she spelled it, you know, with you guys early on several months ago and and loved it and it's been a big thing. So congratulations on creating a perfume for non-perfume with people.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, and it's a really cool perfume because it's, at the same time, really really simple and really really powerful.
Speaker 1:And what's the central note?
Speaker 2:It's. It's a sandalwood, sandalwood and amber. So fragrances are broken down into top notes, middle notes and bass notes, just like music. And this is top notes are your fresh citrus notes, very light florals. Middle notes are going to be your heavier florals, lighter wood, light ambers. And then bass notes are your heavy woods, smoky notes, heavy ambers. Jordan's perfume is all bass notes. It's all sandalwood and amber notes. Yeah, and it's intentionally simple where there's not a lot of raw materials.
Speaker 2:When a perfume gets really quote unquote perfumey and head api, a lot of the times is because it's just really complex. There's a lot of different fragrances happening out one time which confuses our brain. So it's intentionally really simple. That's what those bass notes and. But bass notes are also really powerful in that they are on the molecular level. They're very large. They're really large molecules that are not volatile, so they kind of just hang around, they hang out.
Speaker 2:So Jordan's perfume is one that if you put it on in the morning, like you're going to be able to smell it that night, you're probably going to be able to still smell it the next day. And also because it's really simple, the wearer of the perfume might go quote unquote nose blind to it, which just means, you know, our olfactory system is made to go nose blind to things so that we can interpret other things around us. So if you wear this perfume, you might go nose blind to it where you can't. You know, maybe after having it on for a little bit you can't smell it anymore. But when you walk into a room, other people are going to be able to smell it, but it's not going to be overwhelming to them. So it's definitely probably. It's probably that favorite thing I've created to date, as far as I'm as a fragrance goes to bring in a candle or no, keep it a perfume.
Speaker 2:We. I've thought about bringing it into a candle. And this is where you know, this is where perfume perfumes, the science right, it's a chemistry, and that that formula would not function in a candle because because it's all base notes and it's the molecules that are in that, that perfume, and by molecule I just mean, like once you get to the, that, that molecular level and in the on a fragrance, those molecules are just so big and heavy that if you put it into a wax it would never come out of the wax Interesting. You'd light the candle and nothing would happen. It would just be wax that's lit there. You wouldn't be able to get the actual fragrance out of it.
Speaker 1:So I think one thing I would take away from all that talking that you just did is all of you that are sitting out there in chemistry class thinking this is the big waste of my time. Untrue, very, very untrue.
Speaker 2:It's like because I was definitely that kid in chemistry, that was like I literally am never going to use this again in my life. And your entire life now is wrapped around chemistry. When I'm perfuming, it's all. It's all. It's all math and chemistry. The amount of the amount of times I'm using algebra is honestly a stoneston. That's astonishes me.
Speaker 1:I'll send my son down to help you. He's a math nerd. Nelson down Please. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm so bad at mental math I'm not going to write it out, but long for it so pay attention, kids Pay attention.
Speaker 1:Hey, so one more question before I get to the very last question of the rep. How many fragrances have you done so far that you've not the ones that you've killed, that the ones that have actually become something?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah we've probably, I think right now, like active. Active fragrances. That would include anything that's currently in the line or seasonal stuff. Sure, that may not be available right now, but you know we'll come back for the spray or summer or fall. I think we've got about 35 different actual fragrances.
Speaker 1:And what's your scent for the season Of all of those? I think I know, but what's your scent of?
Speaker 2:the season. Oh, what's my scent for this season?
Speaker 1:This season.
Speaker 2:Um, well, I'm going to cheat a little bit and say that I've got two, because they actually go amazing together, but for specifically in candles, because it's candle season, right, yeah, the first would be our balsam fir candle, which is just I intentionally made it to be a candle that smells like a classic Christmas fragrance but actually smells like a Christmas tree like, actually smells like a Fraser for Christmas tree doesn't sound, doesn't smell like this sugary, sweet, fake Christmas tree, like there's so many of those candles out there. So I love our balsam fir because it's just, it truly smells like you're just putting your face into, into the pine needles and sappiness of the actual balsam fir tree, and I love that. And also it's still it's a sore spot in my in my heart. But my, my wife, jordan, is allergic to having a real Christmas tree in our home. So we have to do the fake Christmas tree thing. So burning the balsam fir candle works takes takes the edge off a little bit.
Speaker 1:I'm allergic to the lights on tree branches anymore, so now we have to do the artificial tree too. So balsam fir makes it appear.
Speaker 2:It's there you go, there you go. That works, whatever it takes, whatever it takes, yeah, and then my other one would be our cowboy Christmas candle, which is we. We wanted to do a like, we wanted to do a Christmas fragrance that paired well with that, with that slightly sweet, pine, sappy freshness of the balsam fir candle. You know, I wanted to balance that with something that was like warm and leathery and smoky, and that's the cowboy Christmas candle. It's nice, leather, ambrine notes, it's so fun and just like I love burning it with the balsam fir together, like those two things together.
Speaker 2:I'm going to try that, or maybe do the balsam fir during the day, and then the cowboy Christmas, you know as, with the fireplace on at night, you know, with a, with a nice class of whiskey or something like that I've never sent you photos of your candles burning at night with an old fashioned in my other hand. Never, never, never, never have you ever done that?
Speaker 1:I think every time I have an old fashioned and the fireplace is going and there's a candle that I send you a picture of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like if you look at our text thread, it's just a lot of old pictures of old fashioned candles. Old fashioned candles.
Speaker 1:And I think, like for me, cowboy Christmas I'm a big fan of too, but it sort of tells me it's like Ranger Station Christmas to me, like I get it Totally.
Speaker 1:It's so true to who you all are and what you do, and I think it's a great sentence, so I love it. So I'm going to wrap it up with one last question for you. You know I'm super fortunate now 35 plus episodes in that I've gotten to share some really, really amazing stories with some really amazing people, and now I'll count you among those people as well, and I've been lucky to get to have that opportunity. But if you were at a place in your life that you were ready for somebody to tell the Steve Soderholm story, who would you pick to tell your story and why would you pick them?
Speaker 2:Who would I pick to tell my story? And why do they have to be living? Nope, no, they don't even have to be related Could be anybody you want.
Speaker 2:Okay, this might feel outside of left field, but I'll be Teddy Roosevelt fan, oh cool, and I think I would choose him. And the reason I would do it is because, like you guys, haven't read the, you know. You know, the rise of Theodore Roosevelt or any of his other biographies are just incredible, just the passion that he had. But the thing that I love the most about him is he? Has he lived this out for well? First of all, he was the ultimate outdoorsman.
Speaker 2:You know, so he's, like you know, living the ranger station brand to a T where he's. You know he was, he was out in the frontier hunting all the time. You know he's the ultimate outdoorsman, so just such a man's man, but he has. He has this speech that is called there, is come to be called the man in the arena speech and, like anybody listening, please go, please go look at it, and it's. It's something that's very true for me. The speech is all about how those who the man in the arena is the one who desert deserves the credit, basically, of like the person that is out there trying things, regardless of if you succeed or fail, because you're, if you're out there trying cool things, you're going to fail, right, you're going to fail a lot and you're going to succeed. So, yeah, but it's so.
Speaker 2:I just have so much respect for him and that's that's what I something that we always say at ranger station is that, and for me personally, is that we want to die with memories and not dreams, the whole idea being like, hey, if we've got a crazy idea, if we've got a dream, if we want to go try something, the worst thing that could happen is us get to a place where we were.
Speaker 2:We regret that we never tried it. Yeah, like we're, we need to try those things and it's just so. It's like, truly, the man in the arena, the main, or woman in the arena that are just out there taking the risk, I think those are the people that, like I, just have the most respect for, and I think I think they're the people who you know reach the end of their lives probably the most fulfilled, because they look back and you know they've they've failed a lot and they've succeeded a little, but they, they don't have a lot of regrets, and that's that's how I try to live my life and also it's what gets me through a lot of the hard times when things do go wrong, when there is failures, because there are failures, it's going to happen and it will always happen, and but that's part of what keeps me going. So, yeah, I'd probably he'd do a good job. I feel like he would be the one, I'd want to do it and he'd be passionate about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:He would probably yell the whole time.
Speaker 1:But that's okay, which I like, but she's kind of the opposite of you. You're so not a yeller, but yeah, that's why I would.
Speaker 2:that's the balance.
Speaker 1:There'd be a balance there. Yeah, right, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2:I'm usually kind of like right here.
Speaker 1:So it is, it's your brother, the same way as John. That way Is he kind of even killed all the time too.
Speaker 2:Um no, we're super different. We are very, very different, that's the one thing you have. That's not alike.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I studied, if it gives any context to it. I studied business in school and John studied philosophy.
Speaker 1:So it's like we are. We're very, very different people. It says a lot. It says a lot. Yeah Well, steve, thanks so much for taking time today. I appreciate it. You have an inspiring story and I'm thrilled that we get to share it. So thank you for taking the time. It means a lot.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, same to you, Harry. I mean, I know it's like we. This has been so cool because I feel like every time we get together, this is, this is kind of what we do anyways. So, um, but yeah, love, I mean love everything, everything you're doing. And I think, going back to what I just said, I think you're, you're living out so much of that.
Speaker 2:You are the meeting arena right now You're like you're, you're taking risks, You're, you're right out there and trying these things that nobody has. So, um, a ton of amount of respect for you and for good market and everything that you guys are are working on. So, thank you for having me. I'm, yeah, yeah, I'm honored, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Good Market podcast. A new episode will drop the second Tuesday of each month, so make sure you subscribe wherever you're listening, give us a like, a follow and a share, and please leave a review so that we can reach even more people and grow even more good. Tune in next time to hear more stories from good people with great products supporting exceptional causes. We'll see you next month. Bye.
