why the shop is shut most of the year

If you've landed here and found nothing to buy, that's deliberate. The shop opens four times a year. Here's why, and how to be there when it does.

What a drop is

A drop is a date. The shop opens at 9am, everything is available, and it closes when the batch is gone. Then I pour the orders that came in, post them, and shut again until the next one.

The list gets in a day early. Not as a gimmick — because the popular scents genuinely go, and twenty-four hours is the difference between getting the one you wanted and reading "sold out".

Why not just be open

I tried. Being open all the time means holding stock, and holding stock means guessing — how many of each scent, in each size, for a year. Guess high and you've got money sitting in a spare room in candles nobody chose. Guess low and everything's sold out anyway, just unpredictably.

Pouring to order removes the guess. I make what people actually bought. There's no dead stock, no discounting to clear it, and nothing sitting around losing its scent.

It's also the only version of this that fits in one pair of hands. I'm not a factory with a website. I'm one person, and four proper drops a year is what I can do while doing it properly.

What it means for you

• You wait. Orders go out a couple of weeks after the shop shuts, and I tell you the date before you buy.
• Things sell out for real. When it says sold out, it has actually sold out. There's no back room.
• Nothing is ever discounted to clear. There's nothing to clear.
• Gift cards work whenever. They don't expire and they're valid on any drop, which is the reliable way to give someone a seasonal scent.

How not to miss one

Join the list. It's one email a month at most, and I hate them too — I'm not going to send you a newsletter about autumn.

You'll get one email a week or so before a drop with the date, and one on the morning the list gets early access. That's it.

The next one is Friday 25 September at 9am. The list gets in on the Thursday.