How a Two-Alarm Fire Almost Ended Our 30-Year Candle Business, But Didn’t

Guest post by Mark Gross, A Cheerful Giver I run A Cheerful Giver out of Elmer, New Jersey. The population is about 1,300. We make candles. Been at it since 1991. January 11, 2025, I got the phone call. Our building was on fire. Two-alarm. They had to bring in trucks from Gloucester County to […]

Guest post by Mark Gross, A Cheerful Giver

I run A Cheerful Giver out of Elmer, New Jersey. The population is about 1,300. We make candles. Been at it since 1991.

January 11, 2025, I got the phone call. Our building was on fire. Two-alarm. They had to bring in trucks from Gloucester County to help put it out. By morning there was nothing left. Thirty-something years of equipment, raw materials, finished product. Gone.

So yeah. That happened.

The remains of a burned factory building

Photo provided by Mark Gross.

The first call I made wasn’t to the insurance company

I picked up the phone and started calling our workers.

Four workers hold candles and smile for the camera We have a partnership with CODI that goes back over 20 years. Adults with special needs hand-wick every candle we sell. That’s not a marketing line. That’s literally how our candles get made. These people are part of our operation.

I had to tell them we still had a company. That they still had work. Honestly, I wasn’t totally sure how we were going to make that true yet, but I said it anyway. Figured we’d work out the details later.

Turned out to be the right call.

The immediate support I didn’t see coming

Orders started rolling in within days. Not normal orders. People buying candles because they heard about the fire and wanted to keep us going. Retailers calling to say they weren’t going anywhere and to take whatever time we needed.

I wasn’t expecting that. But looking back it makes sense. We spent 30 years putting out a product we were proud of. We load our candles with fragrance. We don’t cheap out on materials. We never have. So when the building burned down, people felt like they had a stake in us making it back.

You can’t fake that kind of loyalty. You either built it already or you didn’t. We got lucky that we had.

Getting back to work without a building

Some people would have spent six months planning the comeback. Drawing up blueprints, ordering equipment, getting everything perfect before making a single candle.

We didn’t do that. We cobbled things together. Found space. Got creative. Started pouring candles however we could. It was ugly and it was definitely not how we’d normally operate. But we had orders to fill and people counting on us.

Customers don’t care if your setup is perfect. They care if you’re still open. So we were.

Small candle in a glass jar with two wicks and a pretty ribbon

What nobody tells you about rebuilding, long-term

The hardest stretch wasn’t the first week. The first week you’re running on adrenaline, people are rallying around you and it actually feels kind of hopeful.

The hard part is month three, month four. When you’re grinding every day, costs are through the roof, revenue is half what it used to be, and nobody’s writing news stories about you anymore. That’s when it gets lonely.

I don’t have any great wisdom for that part. I just showed up every day and made candles. Some days that’s all you can do.

What I wish I’d done before the fire

Real talk. If I could go back:

Write everything down. How we mixed our fragrances, which suppliers we used, how the equipment was set up. All of that lived in people’s heads. When the building burned, we had to reconstruct it from memory. That was brutal.

Read your insurance policy. Not skim it. Actually sit down with your agent and ask hard questions. If the whole place is gone tomorrow, what exactly happens? You want that answer before you need it.

Build your online sales now, not later. We had a strong wholesale business but when production slowed down, our website, Amazon, and TikTok Shop kept money coming in. If those channels had been bigger before the fire we would have been in much better shape during the rebuild.

Keep a backup supplier list. When you need materials fast you can’t spend three weeks finding vendors. Have the names and numbers ready before you ever need them.

A stainless steel table covered with candles in progress

Photo provided by Mark Gross

Where things stand now

It’s early 2026 and honestly we might have our best year yet. We’re shipping to thousands of stores around the country and our CODI team is back doing what they do best.

The fire was the worst thing that ever happened to this company. But we came out the other side. Not because we had some brilliant plan. Because we had good people, a good product, and customers who gave a damn.

If you’re dealing with your own disaster right now, all I can say is keep showing up. It’s not glamorous advice. But it’s the only advice I’ve got that I know actually works.

Mark Gross is one of the owners of A Cheerful Giver, a candle manufacturer based in Elmer, New Jersey. Founded in 1991, A Cheerful Giver produces over 1,400 fragrances and partners with CODI to employ adults with special needs. Visit acheerfulgiver.com.