It all started in 2011 when Aaron McWilliams and his wife Sara started making Spiral Lights in their garage in Hillsboro, ND. After coming up with the idea in a restaurant, a few candle companies told him it couldn't be done cost effectively. So he and Sara set to work inventing a process themselves. It took them four tries to get a prototype that worked - and about 20 more attempts to duplicate that design consistently.
As the spiral cotton wick burns, it melts the wax and fills in the hollow candle. When the spiral wick runs out (about 3/4 of the way down the candle) the now-filled cylinder and wooden wick creates a second candle that will burn for over 40 more hours.
This idea earned Aaron a patent in 2015. US 9,033,701 B1
As Spiral Light Candles grew, so did their reach. In 2012 the garage manufacturing space was replaced with a modern factory built out of an old potato warehouse. Hundreds of candles a day were shipping to over 600 stores all across the United States. The product line grew into three sizes and even included a square version of the popular candle.
In late 2016, after seeing more than thirty percent of their boutique vendors close their doors in the post Amazon days, Aaron and Sara made the hard decision that the Christmas season of 2016 would be the last for the candle factory.
They shipped enormous amounts of candles out to distraught vendors who wanted as many of the candles as they could get before the factory shut down. At the end of December, 2016 Spiral Light Candle closed it's doors in Hillsboro, ND for the last time and it appeared the unique candle would be no more.
In the Fall of 2017, Todd and Tammi Nelson drove north to Hillsboro, ND in search of a larger wax melter for their small candle factory. They ended up coming home with a new candle company. They moved the factory to Lakeland, Minnesota after a short-term stop in their Afton, Minnesota garage and set out to resurrect, renew and refresh the unique candle brand.
The result is what you see today with new scents, new packaging and a new logo. They continue to increase manufacturing capability while focusing on improving the quality of the candles.