In September 2022, I inherited our law firm’s holiday gifting program. My manager handed me a budget spreadsheet and said, “You’ve got this.” She was right eventually. It just didn’t feel that way at first.

The firm had 38 employees at the time—40 if you count the two contractors who drifted in and out in Q4—and we sent holiday gifts to about 22 clients in a normal year. Traditionally that meant wine, gift cards, or branded tech gadgets. Nothing wrong with any of those, exactly. But they could have come from any company in America. I wanted something that looked like we had actually thought about it. That’s how I fell down the Voluspa rabbit hole.

The Search for Something That Didn’t Feel Generic

Voluspa kept showing up in luxury corporate gift guides. Not the low-effort listicles, but posts by event planners and hotel managers who buy gifts in real volume. They described a premium home fragrance brand with unusual scents and packaging elegant enough that recipients kept the jars after the candle burned down. That last detail mattered to me. A candle that becomes a coffee table keepsake is doing more work than a gift card ever will.

I’m not naturally a luxury-goods person, and from the outside a $40-something candle looks like an extravagance. What I came to understand is that the gift isn’t really the wax. It’s the signal. When we send a client something they wouldn’t conventionally buy for themselves, they feel the difference.

Testing Voluspa with a Small Order (Without Betting the Budget)

In October 2022, I placed my first order. One Voluspa Baltic Amber large jar candle. One Voluspa Yashioka Gardenia diffuser. Two items, roughly $90 plus shipping—maybe $100, I’d have to check the invoice. Not exactly a transformative sales month for the boutique. But they treated the order like it mattered, which is the point of this story.

Why those two? The Baltic Amber large jar candle is the brand’s bestseller, with warm amber notes of vanilla, sandalwood, and coconut. That made it the safer client gift. The Yashioka Gardenia diffuser was my test of the floral side. Gardenia is elegant without being heavy, and a diffuser works for clients who won’t light a candle around kids, pets, or excessive caution.

I put the test candle in the office kitchenette with a sign: “Test gift. Please don’t take.” People took the idea instead. A partner stopped by at lunch to ask where the candle was from. Two associates asked about the diffuser. One paralegal said it made the office feel “like a hotel lobby”—she had never commented on office supplies once in five years.

The trigger event came two days later when another partner carried the candle to her office and left a note that said “Borrowing this. Get another one.” After twenty years in office administration, I have never seen anyone walk off with a Target candle. That told me everything I needed to know about what Voluspa’s packaging and scent do for people.

How the Two Products Split My Gift List

The Baltic Amber large jar candle became our signature client gift. The jar is heavy and reusable—clients later sent photos of it holding makeup brushes, pens, even a small plant. Burn time is around 60 hours, if I’m remembering the product specs correctly. And the scent is the closest thing to a warm welcome that you can fit in a glass jar.

The Yoshioka Gardenia diffuser became the repeat-client gift. No flame means it’s safer for homes with children or pets, and it still smells expensive. That said, I’ll note a caveat from direct observation: Baltic Amber reads as more unisex, while gardenia skews slightly feminine. I didn’t let that dictate every decision, but it guided a few.

The Fragile Art of Buying Small

Before the larger order, I worried we were wasting Dana’s time. Dana runs the B2B side at the gift boutique. She had clearly managed accounts much bigger than ours; there was a corporate portal and everything. Our order was a couple dozen units, from an out-of-state law firm. Why would she care?

She cared. She answered questions, checked shipping windows, and warned that October was borderline for a December delivery even back in 2022. The relationship that began with a roughly $100 test order is now three seasons old and worth several thousand dollars to her. I’ve learned that’s how a lot of good supplier relationships actually start: small order, honest questions, and then you prove you take the relationship seriously.

Not every supplier behaves this way. Some won’t give you the time of day under a certain order volume. I take that as information. Today’s small order is tomorrow’s recurring account. Vendors who understand that are the ones worth keeping. Small doesn’t mean unimportant—it means potential.

One caveat: we never ask for pallet pricing on two dozen units. We pay fair wholesale prices, and the boutique still makes a healthy margin on us. Everyone wins.

Holiday Figurines, Glass Decor, and the Hobby Lobby Question

Candles handled the gifting, but the office still needed holiday decor. That meant learning the holiday figurine market in roughly an afternoon. My first move—a wooden sleigh from a craft store—clashed with the lobby. What worked was simpler: a small holiday figurine on the reception desk and a sculpted glass figurine on the conference table. Simple reads as more expensive than busy.

One practical warning: a glass figurine looks refined but breaks. Buy storage supplies when you buy the figurine, not in January when you’re trying to pack it away. A divided bin, tissue paper, and a designated closet shelf will save your sanity.

This is also why office admins ask me every year: “When is scrapbooking on sale at Hobby Lobby?” We use scrapbook-quality paper, tags, and embellishments to wrap client gifts by hand, and Hobby Lobby’s rotating category sales are the least expensive way to buy those. I can’t responsibly quote the scrapbooking sale schedule from memory, because the calendar shifts. Check the current weekly ad at hobbylobby.com before you drive anywhere.

Timing advice I’ll stand behind: buy seasonal paper and themed tags in October or early November. By December, the holiday-specific choices are picked over. Call the store ahead to confirm stock, and shop on a weekday. The sale weekends are genuinely frantic.

What Actually Happened That December

Our branded gift boxes arrived with slightly crushed corners in the first year. Dana’s team replaced them from stock they hadn’t yet shipped to us. A good supplier fixes problems; a mediocre one explains them.

The one mistake I made was tiering staff gifts by tenure. Longer-serving employees got the large jar candle; newer people received a smaller Voluspa product. It felt fair on paper. In practice, it created a strange silent ranking around the break room. If you’re buying appreciation gifts, make them identical. Let tenure show up in the payroll system, not in the candle.

The client response was the kind you actually want. Three clients asked where to buy another candle for their home. One sent a photo of the Baltic Amber jar on their coffee table next to a stack of hardcovers. Nobody sends that photo after receiving a wine club membership.

There is something satisfying about a holiday operation that clicks. After the September spreadsheet jigsaw, the stop-and-start freight delays, and a sign on a test candle that everyone ignored, seeing a real client light a real product made the whole thing worth it.

What I’d Tell Other Admin Buyers

If you’re where I was in 2022, here’s the short version:

Rachel, the coordinator before me, called in January to ask how it went. When I told her about the candle and the partner who stole it, she laughed for a while. She had proposed the same Voluspa idea two years earlier, and the managing partner vetoed it as “too expensive.” None of us can fully explain what changed. Maybe the partner who stole the candle is the one who approves budgets now. Maybe it’s simpler than that: a $90-or-so test order is a very reasonable price for this much proof.

So if you’re typing “when is scrapbooking on sale at Hobby Lobby” into a search bar while planning your holiday wrapping station, let me save you the trouble: check the sale ad, buy early, and call ahead. Then light a Baltic Amber, make a checklist, and give the small order a chance. It might become the tradition that keeps your clients—and your office—genuinely happy all year.

Jane Smith

Jane Smith

I’m Jane Smith, a senior content writer with over 15 years of experience in the packaging and printing industry. I specialize in writing about the latest trends, technologies, and best practices in packaging design, sustainability, and printing techniques. My goal is to help businesses understand complex printing processes and design solutions that enhance both product packaging and brand visibility.

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