Smith Mountain Industries finds sweet smell of success

The company behind WoodWick candles and a new spill-proof scent diffuser is aiming to double its business this year.

In Korea, Japan and other countries, that will mean unseating Yankee Candle’s market share.

In Lynchburg, it could mean finding 300,000 square feet of manufacturing space and hiring hundreds of people.

“It really is a matter of keeping up with the growth. That’s the challenge right now,” said John Fontana, chief executive officer of Smith Mountain Industries in Forest. “I’m really hopeful we’ll be able to stay here.”

Smith Mountain Industries makes more than one million candles and other scented products each month, said Fontana. It has a factory on Dillard Drive, three other warehouses, an outlet store and 250 employees.

About 180 employees work on the manufacturing floor mixing scents and wax, trimming wicks and packaging candles. Fontana wants to find space in the Lynchburg area for the company to grow so it can provide more manufacturing jobs for low-skilled workers who live in the area, he said.

Smith Mountain Industries is the parent company of Virginia Candle Company, which was started about 15 years ago in a Lynchburg garage. It is best known for its WoodWick candles, which use a patented wood wick that crackles like a small fireplace as it burns.

One of the most important parts of the candles is their scent, and the company has expanded into other scented products. “We’re really a fragrance business,” Fontana said. “The candle is just a way to get the fragrance into the atmosphere.”

Last fall, a few months after Fontana became CEO, Smith Mountain Industries bought a company called Fragrance Dynamics, which makes small tins filled with scented gel. They’re useful for cars and gym bags, or other enclosed areas, Fontana said.

Another new product is a spill-proof diffuser. It’s like a reed diffuser, but a wooden cap closes the bottle of scented oil, preventing spills but still wicking the fragrance into the air. Fontana said the company has patented the design.

SMI has been making its spill-proof diffuser for Proctor & Gamble, sold under the Febreze brand. P&G also has SMI make branded candles with wood wicks.

“In the last year we became not just a national gifts company, but we’ve also started providing our technology and our wood wick to major companies,” Fontana said. “That’s one of the things behind our growth right now.”

SMI products are sold in about 10 different countries, and recently the company has expanded in Korea and Japan, Fontana said.

To keep up with the growth, SMI needs to approximately double its footprint and employment. Fontana has been looking for room to open another facility in the Lynchburg area, but he would like to bring all of SMI’s manufacturing and warehousing under one roof this year, he said.

Fontana said he worries sometimes that potential government regulations on products that use petroleum or emit carbon could snuff out the business locally. “It’s just so much easier to do business in China,” he said. “You have to really want to do it here.”

He said he wants SMI’s manufacturing jobs to stay in the Lynchburg area, though. His employees need the jobs and would have trouble finding work elsewhere if manufacturing keeps going overseas.

“I just believe it matters,” he said.