August 7, 2024

CHARLOTTE, NC — Kathy Fogle, owner of HK Craft House and creator of Happy Kat Candles offers more than Sip and Pour events at her store inside Northlake Mall. Her store is a gift shop that also houses products by several Black crafters.

Her Northlake location, HK Craft House just celebrated six years of business. Previous vendors in her shop have also gone on to have their products in Food Lion, JCPenny and more.

Fogle’s Happy Kat Candles also resemble what they smell like. If someone is interested in cinnamon bun smelling candles, they look like cinnamon rolls. She also has a Fudge Brownie Sunday Candle that looks like its namesake.

In the Beginning …

She grew up in Connecticut. She lived in Bridgeport from the age of 12 until she moved to Charlotte at the age of 22. Her parents raised her and her siblings with her dad’s multiple jobs (she believes that’s where she gets her work ethic) and a Christian faith. Her mom was a stay-at-home mom.

Fogle’s career desire as a youth—be a hairstylist. She wanted a doll that was only the head and hair. She even used to cut her own hair as a child for fun and would get into trouble.

Her mom did hair from the home like sew-ins and Jheri curls. It was from her mother where she learned how to cornrow.

At her vocational school she wanted to study beauty culture, fashion or mechanical engineering. She graduated with her diploma in mechanical engineering in 1988. Her dad wanted her to go to college, but she wanted to go to beauty school. Because of this, after graduation she started working at a bank. Because of her career goals, she worked at the bank for less than a week and told her boss that she had to quit.

She enrolled in beauty school and worked part-time at Sears. After graduating from the school, she was 18 and self-employed. She said she even noticed concepts in mechanical engineering show up in beauty school.

“The reason why I work so hard, is so I don’t have to get up and punch somebody’s time clock,” Fogle said.

Candle Maker by Accident

When she moved to Charlotte in the 1990s, she and a friend opened a salon in 1993, called Salon Beau Diva. They closed the establishment in 2000.

Fogle entered candle making by accident. She wanted a hobby.

She happened to see a movie where a female character made candles, had candles burning, listened to music and consumed wine.

“All I could think was, ‘It looks very relaxing,’” Fogle said.

She was already a candle lover, but this intrigued her even more. She grew up on Yankee Candle and loved candles with food fragrances. She went to craft store, Michael’s and purchased a candle making kit for a hobby. She made a few candles, purchased candle jars and had fun.

Finally in 2004, she dived into candle making. She would do hair at the house and light the candles. She said people loved the scents. Individuals would purchase her candles, handmade soaps and butter creams.

The entrepreneur she is, Fogle would go to a farmer’s market on Tyvola Road and sell the candles.

She put the candle making away to work. She would manage to get back into the hobby, but put them away to focus on other aspects of life.

2016

In 2016, she had a surgery and said, “This is it. Sink or swim.”

She wanted to continue to make and sell candles.

“I was not in a position to start a business,” Fogle said. “I didn’t have money saved up. I didn’t have a business plan.”

She admits she couldn’t even afford to buy new products. She utilized leftover product to make candle samples.

She believes it was August or September 2016 when she made a Facebook post that Happy Kat Candles (her nickname) would be available for purchase for the holiday season.

Fogle didn’t have a website or candles made. She produced both in time for the holiday season.

She still didn’t feel ready, but she had friends encouraging her to launch.

The creative received sales and attended vendor events in Charlotte. She said people started to recognize the packaging and candles.

By the end of 2017, she had enough of a following to open a small gift shop inside NODA @ 28^th Creative Arts Studio. The establishment is defunct, but it was a black owned event space in NODA with suites, art, African dance classes and in the back of it – Fogle’s gift shop.

“There was so much culture in that space,” she said. “I was making the sales.”

Her boyfriend told her she needed more visibility outside and be seen.

Fruitful 2018

January 2018, she had a friend tell her to apply to a contest that Northlake Mall was running – Battle of the Pop Ups. They were going to award someone a kiosk at the mall. She held off, but a vendor group on social media posted the application and she decided to fill it out.

She filled it out in February. By April 2018, she forgot about the application. She knew her lease would be ending in NODA and started searching for spaces for her business.

She scheduled a call with a gentleman to view a space and actually received another call at the same time.

It was the general manager from Northlake Mall calling her about her application to the contest and requested a meeting with her.

Fogle, the general manager and the sales team met in the boardroom. She came with her products to pitch. They told her they were impressed by the candles and explained to her that the mall did not have a gift shop and wanted to offer her more than a kiosk, but an inline store.

She had no retail experience and inquired what that was. They explained it was an actual store in the mall.

Fogle knew that was perfect for her because she needed space to craft. She was already hosting Sip and Pour parties in NODA and wanted them at the mall.

“I could help the community by bringing in even more small business owners,” she said. “They couldn’t give her an answer right away because they had more applicants.

But she did go on to win the contest.

June 2018 she opened in Northlake Mall (inline) with no experience in retail. She said she now has a whirlwind of learning experiences like which vendors do best in the mall, how to set up the store, accounting and grew – even during COVID.

“I know what it’s like to be a small business,” she said. “People still work and have a small business. It creates leverage — the opportunity to put their product in a mall.”