One Year of The Apawthecary Co.: What Changed, What We Learned & What’s Coming Next
A year ago, The Apawthecary Co. was just beginning to take shape.
Since then, we've tested, tweaked, reformulated, redesigned, retired a few things, introduced a lot of new ones, and learned a tremendous amount about what we want this apothecary to be.
Some changes are immediately obvious when you look around the shop. Others happened behind the scenes: refining formulas, changing materials, reconsidering products and asking whether everything on our shelves still makes sense for where we're headed.
One year later, The Apawthecary Co. looks quite a bit different.
And that's a good thing.
Our first year was about building.
Year two is about refining.
A whole new soap lineup
One of the biggest changes you'll notice is our soap collection.
Over the past year, we've expanded and reorganized the lineup around a more intentional range of bars, scents and experiences.
Rather than filling the shop with products that feel interchangeable, we wanted the collection to have variety while still making sense as a whole.
That means you'll find everything from calming and clean fragrances to deeper woods, coffee-inspired scents, tropical options and completely fragrance-free choices.
Some of the newer names joining the shelf include Sweet Dreams, Grounds for Whiskey, Tropic Like It's Hot, Nuts About It and more.
We've also been refining how the soaps themselves look.
You'll see intentionally simple designs, thoughtfully selected colors and bars that feel handmade without becoming overly elaborate simply for the sake of appearance.
At the end of the day, soap still needs to be really good soap.
Different scents. Different personalities. Same goal: a bar you'll actually look forward to using.
Our candles got much more than a new jar
The candle collection may be one of the clearest examples of how much we've changed during our first year.
We've moved into 12 oz ceramic vessels with bamboo lids, replacing the previous candle presentation with something cleaner, more substantial and more aligned with the direction of the brand.
But changing the vessel was only the beginning.
We can now laser engrave our candle lids
Those bamboo lids created an opportunity we didn't have before.
We've added laser engraving capabilities, allowing us to put designs directly onto candle lids.
That gives us much more room for special editions, collaborations, gifts and other designs while adding another handcrafted detail to the finished candle.
It's something we're particularly excited to explore during year two.
Crackling wooden wicks are now the standard
Our crackling wooden wicks became one of the most popular details in our candles, so we've made the decision to use them throughout the candle collection.
There's something different about a wooden wick.
Along with the fragrance and glow of the candle, you get that subtle crackle while it burns—another small part of the experience that makes lighting a candle feel like more than simply adding fragrance to a room.
As we continued developing the new candle collection, it became clear that this was the direction we wanted to follow.
Unfortunately, that decision also meant retiring something from our original candles.
Goodbye, little paw
Our original candles included a small paw-shaped wax embed.
We loved it. It was one of those small details that connected the candles visually to The Apawthecary Co.
But product development sometimes means choosing performance and consistency over keeping something simply because it's familiar.
As we refined the candles around the wooden wick, we decided the paw embed no longer made sense for the direction of the product.
So the paw had a good run, but it's officially retired from our candles.
We think what replaced it makes the overall candle experience better.
New candles. New scents. Same cozy purpose.
The new collection still uses our coconut-soy wax and carefully selected fragrance oils, but the fragrance lineup itself has also evolved.
You'll now see candles like Nap Trap, Mug Shot, Lava Juice, Pamp It Up and It's Giving 5 Star, alongside fragrances spanning cozy, fresh, fruity, warm and woodsy profiles.
Some are relaxing.
Some are bold.
Some have names that probably make more sense after you've smelled them.
That's intentional.
We want the collection to feel elevated without becoming overly serious.
Our goal wasn't to take the same candles and put them into prettier jars.
We wanted the entire candle experience to feel better.
We became a lot more “apothecary”
One of the most important additions during the last few months doesn't involve soap or candles at all.
It's tea.
Our herbal tea collection represents an important step toward what we've always wanted The Apawthecary Co. to become.
When we chose the word Apawthecary, we didn't intend for it to simply be a clever name.
We wanted to build a modern apothecary centered around thoughtful ingredients, traditional botanicals, useful products and a clear explanation of why those ingredients are there.
Our herbal teas bring that philosophy into a completely different part of the shop.
These aren't just flavored teas
Flavor matters. Of course we want something you're going to enjoy drinking.
But that isn't where our tea development starts.
Our blends are built around real herbs chosen intentionally for the role they have traditionally played in herbal wellness.
Depending on the blend, you'll find ingredients such as nettle leaf, turmeric, ginger, chamomile, tulsi, mullein, cinnamon, licorice root, white willow and other traditional herbal ingredients.
Every blend has its own purpose and ingredient profile.
We want customers to understand not only what's inside the bag but why each herb earned its place there.
We're not trying to turn an herbal tea into a medicine, nor do we believe every traditional use should be treated like a medical promise.
We do believe the ingredients themselves matter.
That distinction is important to us.
Apothecary herbs aren't limited to the tea shelf
That same philosophy is increasingly shaping our skin and body products.
We're continuing to explore herbal infusions, botanical ingredients and purposeful formulas across our balms, skin care and body care.
Rather than adding an ingredient because it looks impressive on a label, we want to be able to explain what it contributes to the product.
That's becoming one of the simplest ways to describe where The Apawthecary Co. is headed:
Real ingredients. Intentional formulas. A clear reason for what's inside.
The products themselves can still be fun.
They can have ridiculous names.
They can smell incredible.
They can look good sitting on your bathroom counter.
None of those things have to conflict with taking the ingredients seriously.
That's the balance we're working toward.
More products isn't necessarily better
One of the most important things we've learned during our first year is that growth doesn't have to mean continuously adding more products.
Sometimes growth means removing them.
We've become increasingly comfortable asking a simple question:
Does this still belong here?
If the answer is no, we're willing to change it.
Over the past year, that has meant improving some products, replacing others, upgrading packaging, changing formats and retiring products that no longer fit where we're going.
Sometimes the improvement is obvious, like a new ceramic candle vessel.
Sometimes it's a wooden wick.
Sometimes it's a formula adjustment that most people would never notice unless we told them.
And sometimes it's deciding that something we once made simply doesn't need to follow us into the next version of the business.
Our goal isn't to have the biggest catalog.
It's to build the right one.
What hasn't changed
A lot has changed in a year, but the principles behind the products haven't.
We still believe you should be able to understand what you're buying, what's inside it and why it's there.
We remain focused on thoughtful ingredient choices, cruelty-free standards and avoiding unnecessary ingredients such as parabens and phthalates.
We want our products to feel approachable rather than clinical or intimidating.
We're an apothecary—not a pharmacy and not a mass-market aisle of products designed to look and sound exactly alike.
There should be a reason something earns a place on our shelf.
The next year of The Apawthecary Co.
Our first year taught us how much can change once you start listening—to customers, to product performance and sometimes simply to what isn't working as well as it could.
So we're going into year two with a slightly different mindset.
Not simply more.
Better.
Better products.
Better packaging.
Better information.
More intentional ingredients.
A more cohesive collection.
And better ways to help you understand which products actually fit what you're looking for.
A new monthly look inside The Apawthecary Co.
We're also starting something new here on the blog.
Alongside our regular articles about ingredients, skin care, herbal wellness, candles and the other subjects we explore, we'll publish a monthly Apawthecary update.
These will be our place to share new products and fragrances, products we've changed or improved, what's becoming popular, products we're retiring, ingredient and formulation changes, packaging updates, behind-the-product details, seasonal releases, collaborations and a look at what's coming next.
Think of it as your monthly peek behind the shelves.
Because as we've learned during year one, this shop probably isn't going to stop evolving anytime soon.
Here's to year two
If you've ordered from us, recommended something to a friend, shared one of our products, subscribed to our emails, read an article or simply followed along during our first year, thank you.
A year ago, The Apawthecary Co. was a much smaller collection of ideas and products.
Today, it feels considerably closer to the apothecary we've been trying to build.
We're not finished.
We don't really want to be.
There will always be another product to improve, ingredient to explore or idea worth testing.
Year one was about building The Apawthecary Co.
Year two is about making it better.