Relm | Origin Story Part I
How a new smart home aromatherapy company was born.
“An idea — resilient, highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain its almost impossible to eradicate.” — Leonardo DiCaprio, Inception
Inception may be fiction — but this quote couldn’t be truer. So today, I want to share with you the origin story for Relm, our smart home wax warmer.
Before I start, If you are one of our early backers, I cannot thank you enough for your support. I know the world of crowdfunding, preorders, and new companies you haven’t heard of can be intimidating. But my hope in writing this is that you’ll learn more about us, our story, and hopefully feel confident that our team is doing everything in our power to deliver you the best aromatherapy experience possible.
OK, Lets jump in. 👇
The Virus, Smart homes, and Tiger King.
In early 2020 I sat in my 900 sq.ft apartment, just outside of Seattle, where I lived with my wife, my one year old son, a roommate, and two dogs. It was small and crammed, but it was home. On the TV, the news spouted off about some new virus making its rounds in China — probably nothing, I thought.
Fast forward 3 weeks; turns out that virus was something. Soon, Covid-19 had us wearing masks, avoiding public spaces, and distancing from our loved ones. Like everyone else, our home was quickly turned into an office, gym, church, school, or whatever-the-heck-else we decided to do to pass the time — not ideal.
This “new norm” forced us to deeply re-evaluate the space we called home. As an architect and a tech junkie, I became [slightly] obsessed with smart home devices that gave the ability to easily control and change our environment: Lights with different scenes for work, play, relaxation; Thermostats to change up the feel of the space; Noise makers with mood lights to create the perfect ambience, and so on. Soon, our tiny apartment had different controllable themes for everything. I stood proud looking over my new, smart-home-enabled creation, then barked at Alexa to change the scene and plopped on the couch to watch Tiger King with my wife.
Not long into the show, I remembered we had a wax warmer in the kitchen, but seeing as I was already comfy on the sofa (and thoroughly engaged with the Tiger King drama) I opted not to turn the warmer on.
I wish I could just turn it on from my phone. I thought to myself. Then, I did what everyone does when they have a problem; I Googled it in the hopes that I could order the solution with convenient 2-day shipping —oh how mistaken I was.
To my surprise, “smart home wax warmer” yielded no results on Google. Amazon was the same story. Surely one of the big players in the wax warmer industry has one right? nope. Everywhere I looked, I couldn’t find one.
Someone needs to make a smart home wax warmer. I thought to myself. A moment passed, and another thought popped into my head:
“I should make a smart home wax warmer.”
You could say the rest was history, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. See, that moment marked the beginning of a three-year journey to create an aromatherapy device that not only solves the smart home problem, but that creates an entirely new aromatherapy experience centered around you. But I’ll leave that for a later post…Until then, feel free to follow our socials and preorder if you haven’t already!
Cheers,
Taylor
Links 👇
