Natalie Obi: The Tech Guru Building ‘Olores’ One Of Nigeria’s Leading Home Fragrance Brands

The first time I heard about Olores, I was searching for a reputable home fragrance brand to buy a candle, among the recommendations from a couple of friends, one name featured prominently. It was Olores.

Not only did they vouch for Olores’ products and its variety of scents, but they also commended its customer relations and the packaging of its products.

I became curious. What is Olores doing differently that it has become the go-to candle brand for many young people who have become its unpaid influencers?

I had to succumb to my friends’ recommendations, just like many of us do, because we trust our friends’ judgement.

According to American information data and market measurement firm, Nielsen Holdings, 92% of people trust recommendations from friends and family over any other type of advertising.

Olores, a Spanish word for smells/scents, is an eco-friendly home fragrance company specialising in crafting and manufacturing scented candles, reed diffusers, room & linen sprays, and more, inspired by the richness of fragrance in nature.

When I got on a call with Natalie Obi, the founder of Olores, on Tuesday, April 26, 2022, to talk about the brand, I left with a better understanding of Natalie’s personality and how she’s driving Olores to become one of the leading fragrance brands in Nigeria.

Beyond being the scent connoisseur behind one of Nigeria’s leading home fragrance brands; Natalie is a tech enthusiast with vast experience in the public relations and communications sphere.

After graduating from Delta State University with a degree in Computer Science, she pursued a career in brand communications, corporate communications and time management, and worked with leading entertainment brands and names like EME, Davido, Niyola, Wande Coal, Rhythm Unplugged and HipTV.

These variations and career choices have aided her ability to deliver premium services to her customers while juggling a diploma in Backend Engineering at All Africa School and French in Alliance Française. She started both courses in 2022.

After touring Europe with Sony Music, award-winning music star Davido and Lola Rae, Natalie decided it was time for her to have a second source of income and she started working towards starting her business in 2017, importing her candles from London.

“Sony Music had a tour for Davido, and I was project managing it, a European tour. They went to Germany and London, and I was coming from importing from London. I needed a side hustle aside from the whole entertainment thing. Before then, I used to work with 2020 media, and we used to manage Davido and Lola Rae. I decided that I would start in June/July the following year, which was 2017,” she said.

That was how the Olores brand started.

As impressive as her profile might appear, her fragrance entrepreneurship started after a tragic incident. When she was seven, Natalie lost her dad and lost her mom during her final exams at the university. They left her with some inheritances which she used as seed funding for Olores. Five years later, the brand Olores is evidence of her success, tenacity and managerial skill.

“In February 2017, I decided to start my business, I just had some inheritance money, sold some of my mum’s things. So I just decided to use the money to start the business because if I kept the money until my proposed date, I would have probably spent the money,” Natalie Obi told 234star.

Aside from her personal funding, while working in the entertainment industry, one of her bosses also gifted her candle supplies enough for her to make a hobby out of her business. From that point, she started making tea light candles.

“My then boss had gone to America, and he bought me a box of candle supplies, tealight containers, wax, oil, candle dyes, wicks, everything you need to make candles, not as a full-blown production as a hobby. I had all of that. I also ordered some things from London via Royal Mail, and it came through the NIPOST, the local post office.”

In 2021, Olores was renamed Olores Home Ltd from Ethereal Olores. As her brand, Olores, turned five in April 2022, Natalie Obi speaks with 234star about her passion for making eco-friendly candles and her business, Olores Homes Ltd.

What vacuum were you looking to fill in the fragrance market?

Many people buy candles from abroad when they return, and they have excess luggage. Then, when I did my research as well, the candles I used to buy were paraffin candles, and when I researched it, I realized that there were also eco-friendly or more natural ways that you can make candles that are safe for people’s health.

So you have the soy wax and coconut wax; these are the safer wax; you also have beeswax. So I started first with soy and beeswax, a very eco-friendly wax option and candle wax option. And the wax that I started to use was the one that you can also use as a massage candle.

So you can put the wax on the skin; they are skin safe. Those are the kind of waxes I used; I just wanted eco-friendly options where you don’t have to burn paraffin because I used to buy lots of paraffin. And you also don’t have to ship your candles from abroad. You could just buy it in Nigeria for the same quality or even better, and you know, at a very fair price.

You’ve said a lot about being eco-friendly. Is it something you’re passionate about?

Extremely, I am not vegan or vegetarian. I just like things to be really natural.

I’m a very natural person; I do lots of home remedies. I think that explains a lot; I’m that ‘what’s from the earth kind of person’; to use to heal myself or heal the world, it is a much better alternative. I am not saying I don’t believe in science or medicine, I also use that, but I prefer home remedies, very natural things.

How has the Nigerian element propelled your brand regarding being eco-friendly?

I don’t think Nigeria has helped to be eco-friendly because, for example, the coconut wax that we use, I should be able to source here. I cannot because we don’t have people who extract coconut in that form. Nigeria is not helpful to this business at all!

You don’t get most of your wax from Nigeria?

No, I have to import it. One time, somebody said, Oh, well, we grow soybeans here. To hydrogenate and get soy wax, it’s a process you have to open a full-blown factory, and we are in Nigeria we know how expensive that’s going to be. So it’s a tough call to say Nigeria has helped.

The highest that I get from here is some of the candle jars. Because even if you buy from somebody here, the person probably imported as well. You would need a specific capital to make such production because they’re not going to produce less for more businesses.

Would you say Olores has fulfilled the mission to which it started?

Yes, and we are still in the process of fulfilling this mission. I have people that come with candles from abroad and not just the small jars, they are huge, and they come to refill them.

How many products have you launched since you started?

We have the new products that are the room sprays; we just used to sell candles and diffusers. Candles were the reason I started, and diffusers were just another option for fragrancing a space if you don’t want to use fire – a non-flame way to fragrance a place.

We have added the room spray, which launched on May 1. We have five fragrances: Ladan, Lemongrass, Rich Tea, Fleurs, and Dele. It cuts across all fragrance profiles, i.e. citrus, oudy/woody, oriental, floral, sweet and Aqua/fresh scents.

The other three are new fragrances that we are adding to the collection. The collection will be called the Iridesan because the jars are iridescent. We have both scented candles and diffusers. We have the Ladan – oriental with a bit of Aqua fresh, Pink Grapefruit, Daffodil – Floral (women love the floral scent).

What scents do people gravitate to the most based on gender preference?

If we are going with gender, women love Wheat Gourmand – sweet scent and floral. Only a few women that are well refined like the Aqua scent, the fresh scent. Citrus is across the board for everybody. Men gravitate toward the oud scents. Just a few men would gravitate towards the female scents, maybe like 40% or 30%.

Do you have an insight into why men and women like these scents?

I just think it is human nature, to be honest. If I wasn’t so much into scent, and I’m just an everyday girl, a girly girl, I would also gravitate towards the sweet scents because women are like, softish or we are perceived as soft, so we go for sweeter things.

I love masculine scents, so I use men’s perfumes, to be honest. So because that is just me, I’m different. If you’re generalising, most women gravitate towards floral because we love flowers. And then the sweet scents because who doesn’t like sweet scents? But in general, selling for five years, Nigerians love sweet scents.

What would you say are the challenges of running your type of business in Nigeria?

Is it okay to say entrepreneurship ‘ya werey gan!’ (is very crazy)? Not to be too spiritual, but God has been faithful because it has to be among 1000 ways to die. We have to source everything we need abroad; the only thing that we do here is our staffing. From the wax, the oil, the wicks, everything is from abroad, including packaging, down to the stickers.

We have people that do a good job here. I’ve found about two people that I use from time to time just in case, but every single thing I have to get there because of the quality of the packaging and products.

Luckily, I stay in an area with very good electricity because I know that most people face electricity problems. Either there is no light, or the tariff is too high. Also, luckily I use my extra space as my work studio and store because the store prices are not cheap.

If there is a way someone can open a huge warehouse where we can buy these raw materials at a very reasonable price the way we buy from abroad; it would be nice.

Sometimes when you ship these things, either NAFDAC has seized your goods because you are making labels from outside of the country or counterfeit concerns, or the items come, and they have mishandled them at customs. It’s crazy.

What should we be expecting from Olores in the coming years?

Obviously, more fragrances because the more fragrance you make, the more you get to satisfy everybody. People get tired of burning the same fragrance repeatedly, they want something new.

What’s the next new thing? If you don’t have the next new thing, they bounce to the next person that has your next new thing. So we’re going to be working more on fragrances.

In a few years, I plan to go to Grasse in France to learn more about fragrances and see if I can start distilling my own on a small scale. So that at least we can start producing, blending our own fragrances from here. I wouldn’t cut off my suppliers entirely because it takes a process where we have to blend the oils. They already have the sheet of my ideas, and I would still use them, but I would start practising on my own to begin distilling from here.

Also, we are looking to expand. I have this dream where you stop over at a CDG or JFK, and then there’s Olores there. I would also probably develop a better car diffuser model because people really do ask for it.