Inside The Mad Dash Of Hispanic Heritage Month With Fast-Growing Latina-Founded Candle Brand Bonita Fierce

Bonita Fierce founder Melissa Gallardo was in overdrive leading up to and during Hispanic Heritage Month, a period that she refers to as her Super Bowl.

Her candle brand typically generates 20% to 25% percent of its sales from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, an amount equivalent to about 10,000 candles. This year, the four-week sprint was even more hectic than usual because Bonita Fierce was readying to enter Barnes & Noble—and the chain ordered four times more than she expected. Initially, Barnes & Noble was going to place Bonita Fierce in the Spanish language section and primarily stores in the Southwest, but the brand ultimately was rewarded with a national rollout.

Gallardo says, “Once we presented our packaging and also showed the power of [the Latinx] community and were able to showcase our brand in such an authentic way, they were sold.”

While Gallardo was thrilled at the prospect of placing Bonita Fierce in nearly 600 Barnes & Nobles locations, she was panicked about financing the inventory for them. She ended up opening a line of credit and pulled money from credit cards she obtained in 2022 with a 0% annual interest rate. She had grant money, too, that she could use. This year, she drew $35,000 in grant funding. Last year, she scored $55,000.

Ulta Beauty’s Muse Accelerator, which gives $50,000 to BIPOC beauty founders to accelerate their businesses, was responsible for most of Bonita Fierce’s grant money in 2022. The Muse program helped Gallardo understand that there will be retail surprises such as these. Bonita Fierce is stocked at Nordstrom as well as Barnes & Noble and is slated to break into an undisclosed online-only retailer at the end of the month. Between a Nordstrom restock and the Barnes & Nobles purchase order, Bonita Fierce hand-poured 7,000 candles in 12 weeks in advance of Hispanic Heritage Month.

Gallardo anticipates wholesale will constitute two-thirds of the brand’s business this year. Prior to this year, 40% of Bonita Fierce’s sales were from its direct-to-consumer channel, 40% were from wholesale accounts, and 20% were from corporate gifting and consignment.

Bonita Fierce started as a hobby. After the pandemic spread to the United States, Gallardo decided to try her hand at candle making. She was already burning many candles to elevate her at-home work environment. At the same time, she was celebrating her Latina heritage by embracing her curly hair and fostering self-love. In June of 2020, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the intensification of the Black Lives Matter movement, she began intentionally shopping for products that were BIPOC- and women-owned.

“It really hit me, when I was looking for candles, that there was nothing out there on market that really represented my heritage and my culture,” says Gallardo. “I was tired of seeing the lavender, lemonade and the pumpkin spices of the world. Not to say that all of those fragrances aren’t great, but it became stale, and it didn’t represent a multicultural audience.”

She launched Bonita Fierce in November 2020 with $10,000 and rebranded it a year later. The brand’s debut collection included candles with Spanglish phrases, but Gallardo says, “It didn’t really fit with what I was going for.” In 2021, the revised brand introduced five scent varieties of 8.5 oz.-candles retailing for $34 and 4.3-oz. sizes retailing for $16. Today, the brand offers 13 scent varieties. The bestsellers are Cafecito Con Leche, which has hints of coffee, sugar, caramel and vanilla, and Coquito, which is named for the traditional Puerto Rican eggnog, and has hints of coconut, cardamom and cinnamon. Bonita Fierce projects that its sales will be up 80% this year from last year.

The candles are made with the Latinx community in mind, but Gallardo shares that Bonita Fierce’s customers have become older and whiter as the brand as matured. “I was really surprised to see that this year more and more people are looking to shop more intentionally,” she says. “It’s amazing to see so many people united through a candle and experiencing and learning about our culture through it.”

Before launching Bonita Fierce, Gallardo worked for Viacom as a content services coordinator. When she launched the brand, she pitched it to former interns, colleagues and classmates in media. It received attention from Cosmopolitan, NBC and ABC Eyewitness News, and press coverage snowballed from there. The media spotlight has been an important boost for customer acquisition. Bonita Fierce runs Google advertising and email marketing as well.

Gallardo is Bonita Fierce’s only full-time employee. She’s leaned on contractors for social media and advertising functions and has two part-time candle production assistants. Gallardo’s mother, sister, stepfather and fiancé assist with the business when they can. The group banded together this year to satisfy the inventory demands of Barnes & Noble and Nordstrom. Gallardo doesn’t want to have to call on them again for large orders in the future. She plans on vetting contract manufacturers to handle the load in the upcoming year.

Following Hispanic Heritage Month, Gallardo says, “It doesn’t feel like a recovery, only the beginning.” In November, Bonita Fierce has an anniversary sale, and then there’s Black Friday, Cyber Monday and, of course, the holidays. In the late spring, the preparation for Hispanic Heritage Month kicks off again.