Page 8
The Battalion
Thursday, December 8,1988
‘Scentchip’ creators thrive despite troubled Texas economy
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — They
may not be the biggest or the best
sculptures Ken Moore has ever cre
ated, but his 79 varieties of wax
Scentchips have proved to be the
product with the sweetest smell of
success.
Moore, a former clinical psycholo
gist, inventor and artist, and his art
ist wife, Kathy, first delved into the
candle-making business almost 10
years ago.
It didn’t go well.
While Mrs. Moore struggled to
keep the business going, Moore
worked as a restaurant manager to
keep them solvent.
Things changed when Moore
dreamed up Scentchips — scent-sat
urated chips of wax shaped like a
flower and leaf and measuring less
than 1 inch in length. The chips can
be placed in a bowl and used like
potpourri or burned using a wax
cone in the center of the mixture of
chips.
This year the Moores expect their
Scentchips to gross $8 million in
sales. The patented chips are sold in
retail stores in all 50 states.
and a wick,’’ says Moore, 40.
In creating a new product cat
egory, Scentchips successfully
fought off corporate giant Hall
mark, which had tried to market a
similar product under the name
Scent Chips.
and an eight-chip variety of Ha
waiian scents: pineapple, white gin-
ger r red ginger, gardenia, hibiscus,
pikake, plumeria and tuberose.
“That isn’t bad, particularly when
we first started out the only experi
ence I had ever had in candle-mak
ing was in the fourth grade when we
made candles using a milk carton
The Moores’ chips come in 52 fra
grances, including vanilla, chocolate,
cinnamon, strawberry, lemon,
orange, lime, maple, clove and the
Christmas scents of frankincense
and myrrh.
There are 19 fragrances mimick
ing Chanel, Obsession, Halston,
Polo, Opium and other perfumes.
“Scentchips are not tied to [
the local economy as other
products are, so we’ve
been successful. ’’
— Ken Moore,
Seen tchip maker
The Scentchips venture that first
only included the Moores and some
of their family members now em
ploys 75 people.
Moore has written two books that
tell merchants how to sell Scentchips
and another that tells them how to
mix the chips to get different aro
mas.
By this time next year, Moore ex
pects to chip in some of the Scent
chips earnings to finance construc
tion of an old Texas Christmas
Village about 7 miles north of San
Antonio.
His 50,000 square-foot Scentchips
production plant will serve as the
anchor attraction among numerous
arts and crafts shops that will open
for a six-week Christmas sales and
This year
Fll get organized.
•Xv
•r-TvXv
, ^ *
ooc*::'
And this year I really mean it. So I’m buying
8
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only is this IBM PS/2 easy to learn and use, but if I’m
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Who knows, with this IBM PS/2,1 may be so
organized even my socks will match.
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“Sometimes we feel guilty that 1R)to a r
this Texas economy were doingJ Alt!'
well,” Moore says. “Scentchips an Raves
not tied to the local economy i |hup s<
other products are, so we’ve hen Indun
successful. iprds.
"What we want to do is create8 ^ven p
organization of manufacturers i ijj, her
this village and to help them,; ireful
terms of going into the
place,” Moore says.
00 a
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Ity, fo
“We know there is a tremendft
amount of talented people out tha g 0n e t<
and we’ve already been through at a year
of what they have gone through d f ea t of
we just want to help,” he says. gjionth
loks a
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