Matt Mewbourne won’t be seen at his booth at the Athens Farmers Market or in his brick-and-mortar store in Monroe, Georgia, for the time being. For most nonessential business owners in the local community, Gov. Brian Kemp’s statewide “shelter in place” order that was put in place on April 2 to combat the spread of COVID-19 has brought on a wave of unforeseen circumstances.
In Mewbourne’s case, he runs a grassroots, environmentally-friendly candle business called Rekindle. At 24, Mewbourne has found himself making the most of his position and is a person who has created an efficient and worthwhile business from his passion for ceramics.
Despite not being able to network and sell face-to-face with customers, he’s been scrambling to get orders finished and shipped out to the proper people through his online store. It doesn’t seem to bother him, though.
Living in a cloud of uncertainty, Mewbourne still chooses not to live in fear. He remains confident his business will survive behind savvy decisions and a strong support system. And he doesn’t even have a degree from the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business — he studied sports medicine.
Developing his passion
Prior to stepping onto UGA’s campus as a freshman, Mewbourne’s love for ceramics was apparent. In high school, he enrolled in an intro to art class where he was introduced to the pottery wheel. He remembers loving it from when he first got started, even though he had room to improve.
“[The hardest part is] getting the clay in the center at a consistent speed and just basically learning to control the clay and not allow it to control you,” Mewbourne said. “I just liked it, it was just so fluid.”
He remembers constantly challenging one of his best friends to see who could “throw” the largest bowl or the tallest vase, which helped him foster his love for the craft. But after developing his ceramics skills through high school, he gave them up for a while.
He got to college and took a ceramics sabbatical, opting to enjoy the freedom of finally being out of the house. Although he knows how important those two years were for his development as a person, he wasn’t really happy with the type of person he was. He didn’t take advantage of the opportunity of actually being in college, studying and focusing on school work.
“I really undervalued a lot of that and just was kind of selfish and pursued things that I wanted to pursue,” Mewbourne said. “[During] freshman and sophomore year, I did whatever I wanted to do, especially because I was out of the house.”
Heading into his junior year, two shifts in Mewbourne’s life took place. First, he moved in with his roommates and started dating his future wife, Kayley Anderkin. Those people were crucial at the beginning of his business, but he had to reignite his passion first.
The interest came back one day towards the end of the semester in 2017 as Mewbourne was sitting in his room studying. He noticed he had been burning a lot of candles recently and was even drinking out of an old coffee mug he had made in high school when he had an epiphany. He realized that all the containers he was using could be repurposed in a meaningful way instead of just thrown away in the landfill.
“So instantly it was kind of this cool idea to get back into creating things like art while at the same time promoting something that’s close to my heart, which is being a good steward of the earth and being sustainable,” Mewbourne said.
His realization would eventually form into Rekindle, but not without some help along the way.
‘Blessing in disguise’
Support first came from his friends and Anderkin, who helped raise a couple hundred dollars to fund three months of independent studio time at a local clay studio. The gesture allowed Mewbourne to get started on making products, and in turn, pursue his passion.
“It just kind of gave me a lot of liberty to create,” Mewbourne said. “It’s cool when you are able to look at things in terms of not having bondage to them or feeling like you have to make a certain amount of money.”
He had the skills with ceramics but still needed to know if he could construct candles properly, so he ordered a lot of supplies online and expected to receive them over the next few days. Hours after placing the order, however, Mewbourne received a different package. He opened it up to find $500 worth of supplies that included 50-pound boxes of wax and over 1,000 wicks. He knew he didn’t pay for the supplies and quickly checked his bank account to reassure himself — no charge.
He found that the package was supposed to be delivered to Louisiana but ended up on his doorstep. He pondered for a while about whether he should just keep it or send it back.
“It’s like one of those stories where you’re just like, ‘Ah, you know, this is a blessing in disguise,’” Mewbourne said. “I was just like, ‘I need to have integrity about this.’”
He called up the candle company to straighten things out. He told them he received the wrong package and the company said they would send a return label so the package could eventually be sent to the correct person.
One week passed, no return label. Two weeks passed, still nothing. To this day, he still hasn’t received that label.
“I felt like it ended up being a blessing, I feel like God had honored my decision to have integrity,” Mewbourne said. “All in all, there’s like $700 or $800 upfront, between the studio costs and all that stuff to be able to just kind of create.”
No business degree, no problem
From there, it snowballed into more than just a job on the side for Mewbourne. He graduated from UGA with a degree in sports medicine, but he wasn’t planning to pursue a job in that field. He and his newlywed wife decided to take a risk. Kayley Mewbourne had graduated two years earlier with a degree in marketing, and started her own photography business, Kayley Lorraine Photography, around the same time. The two are heavily involved in one another’s businesses and balance each other out to this day. She has the business knowledge that can prove useful if he doesn’t know how to go about a situation due to his lack of business education
According to a CNBC article, surveys show that a majority of business owners don’t even have a college degree. From Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and CEO of Facebook, to Steve Jobs, who was the co-founder and CEO of Apple, there are countless stories where a lack of a college degree has not hindered an entrepreneur. Although Mewbourne still has a college degree, his lack of business education was on par and hasn’t hindered him either.
“I think it’s actually been really refreshing for him not to have that necessarily educational background in business and finance and all that stuff,” Kayley Mewbourne said. “He really gets to focus on making the products and really serving the people.”
Part of serving people has been not only through his artistic vision, but also through the social initiatives he has pushed forward with Rekindle. To start, all Rekindle candles are made of soy, coconut wax and essential oils, according to their website. The soy and coconut wax are an environmentally friendly alternative to paraffin wax which comes from petroleum. The wood wicks that are used on the candles come from sustainable lumber mills and with every $100 worth of wicks, a tree is planted.
Also, most candles are housed in tin cans which are bought from local homeless shelters in Athens. The funds allow the homeless shelters to take those funds and buy more food for those experiencing homelessness. Mewbourne said they have worked with Athens PBJ’s, Salvation Army, and Action Ministries and are working towards extending partnerships across the community in the future.
While operating and serving the Athens community, Mewbourne mostly went to the Athens Farmers Market where he sold his products and networked with locals. In early 2019, he met Lily Bilsland, the owner of Sailor Studios in Monroe. She was looking for someone to share her building with and Rekindle seemed like a great fit.
“I thought the idea of a collective type of maker’s space would work well, and I honestly loved the idea of helping a newer handmade business get experience in a retail without as much risk as leasing out a whole building alone,” Bilsland said in an email.
The two small businesses split store and studio space to make and sell products. Bilsland, who also doesn’t have a business degree and dropped out of school in her junior year after her business started to pick up, doesn’t believe that a degree from any business school can teach you what hard work and experience can.
The only setback she thinks it can cause is a lack of networking capabilities and contacts to go to.
“Fortunately, Matt is a natural networker, easily building authentic relationships with those around him, which is really important in business,” Bilsland said. “He has a natural entrepreneur mindset and a great work ethic, neither of which can be taught.”
Employees like Jacob Harrod feel the same way about Mewbourne. Harrod is a management information systems major and has nearly graduated from UGA, but he works for Rekindle as a sales assistant. He goes to the farmers markets and fills in for Mewbourne if he can’t make it to an event.
Harrod has worked at Rekindle for nearly two years and has seen both Matt and Kayley Mewbourne have a strong partnership personally and business-wise.
“[Matt Mewbourne’s lack of business education] allows him to kind of think outside the box instead of looking at Rekindle as a method to make money or to maximize profits,” Harrod said. “He looks at Rekindle as an entity where he can make a living from it, but also, more importantly, he is able to utilize it in a way that benefits his community.”
Facing uncertainty
With a company and business owner that thrives on in-person sales and networking, the COVID-19 pandemic should hit hard. But as Mewbourne has done in the past, he’s adapted. Before events started to cancel and statewide stay-at-home orders spread like wildfire throughout the country, Mewbourne diversified his revenue streams by putting together an online store where customers can go and buy all the candles they need.
When it’s all said and done, he wants to continue to put more time and energy into growing the online store while maintaining the brick-and-mortar location in Monroe and his frequent trips to local farmers markets. Similar to other business owners in Athens and around the country, Mewbourne doesn’t quite know what’s next due to the uncertainty brought on by the coronavirus. What he does know is that he can still get people the candles they want and need.
“We’ve fulfilled so many orders online, but I still get excited every time,” Mewbourne said. “It’s just like, I truly love what I’m doing and I’ve just got a great community of people around me.”
Andrew Walsh 