Brian Young didn’t set out to start a candle company. He set out to move his knee.
After a knee replacement in June 2025, his physical therapist told him to keep moving – “motion is lotion,” she said.
One afternoon, Young noticed a three-wick candle that had burned down and went online to reorder. By the time he looked at his cart, the total was pushing $500.
Wait a minute, he thought. “I wonder if I could make a candle.”
He found out he could – eventually. His first attempts were “complete and total” flops. Young taught himself through videos and books, studying fragrance oils, waxes and what makes a scent perform well.
Within weeks, however, the experiments were producing something decidedly more promising.
It was an unexpected next act for a Mississippi native whose résumé includes telecommunications and product marketing, Tiffany & Co.’s diamond division and 16 years in banking.
Brian Young
Highlands, though, had been a constant. Young first visited as a teenager on church trips during the 1970s and ’80s, later divided his time between Atlanta and the Plateau, and moved here permanently around 2017.
The candles found an audience fast. A porch conversation with neighbors David and Carol Wilkes led to Young’s first retail account at Highland Hiker. For its Log Cabin, he created a fragrance suggesting the place itself – bison leather, flannel, wood smoke and balsam. It has sold out repeatedly.
Today Young creates his own Crown & Ember and Laurelwood collections along with custom fragrances for Highlands businesses, carefully keeping each distinctive so, as he explains, no two shops smell alike.
For the Highlands Chamber of Commerce, he created two signature fragrances. Mountain Air – with aquatic ozone, green leaves and cedarwood – was inspired by driving up the mountain with the windows down.
For Temperate Rainforest, Young went to Dry Falls early one morning and sat beneath the waterfall for 40 minutes with his eyes closed, concentrating on the spray, fallen leaves and damp earth.
His sense of place extends to a collaboration with Highlands ceramic artist Frank Vickery, who creates vessels that Young fills with fragrance. A dollar from each collaboration candle supports The Bascom, while four-legged Highlanders get some love, too: a dollar from every Crown & Ember candle goes to the Cashiers–Highlands Humane Society.
Brian Young, Rosy, and Kenneth Godsey
But what Young most hopes each candle will give back is a memory. He calls it “scent memory” – the ability of fragrance to return us, unexpectedly, to a place, a person or a moment.
“I want them to be reminded of something really special,” he says, “or I want them to create a new scent memory.” If that scent can transport someone back to Highlands, then Young has made more than a candle. He has made a way back.
Highlands Candle Company candles are available online and at select Highlands retailers, including Highland Hiker, Highlands Wine Shoppe, Highlands Mercantile, The Bascom, Calder’s Coffee Cafe, Milli, and Mountain Paws. To learn more, visit highlandscandlecompany.com.
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