MAIDEN History Part 4 – The Present and the Future of MAIDEN

As told by Josh.

So we come to the final part of our history. This part covers quite a length of time, from 2017 until now. But don’t worry, we won’t dwell on the pandemic for too long…

In 2017, we worked with a local branding consultant, Justin Barrow of Studio Bero, to update and refine our brand and identity. Rural life has always been a big part of our identity but working with Justin helped to balance that more successfully with the modern aesthetic of our candles. During this upgrade we also updated all our packaging and website too.

The following year, we worked with Justin again to produce a series of lifestyle images and even a short film entitled ‘Portrait of Her’ (which is viewable here if you’ve not had the chance to see it before). This was an incredibly enjoyable and fruitful endeavor and we still use the resulting images with great pride over our website and marketing.

After that, it was business as usual… until 2020 of course.

Just before the pandemic struck, we had made the decision to move MAIDEN back to the Old School next door: a decision which proved to be very timely indeed, as it allowed us to keep things ticking over easily whilst locked down. Like it did for many others, the pandemic allowed us the time to experiment with some new ideas, and for Mum this meant learning about which flowers can be successfully dried whilst still maintaining their colour. Most of the back garden (and even some of my nan’s garden) became flower growing zones. At this point it was just for fun, we had no plans to use them for MAIDEN.

But two things happened to change that:

The first thing I’m going to talk about was actually inspired by the second thing, but it’s a much shorter story, so I’ll mention it now…We produced some new designs, including the Wildflower Curve, which uses the very flowers that Mum had grown and dried. The design itself was a slight detour from our other Curve designs, employing a crown of flowers at the base of the Curve rather than three sets of decorations between the wicks.

Secondly (but first, chronologically), I got married and, of course, it was a very handmade wedding.

For our wedding flowers Mum produced a dried flower bouquet and a selection of beautiful dried flower wreaths for each bridesmaid. Nearly two years later, the bouquet and the wreaths still look as good as they did on the day, making a long-lasting memento for all of the bridal party.

Dad also got to flex his creative muscles for the wedding by building an elegant wooden arbor decorated with dried hops, which was the backdrop for our ceremony and many pictures.

It was an incredible day and the MAIDEN family grew by one more to include my wife, Xanthe.

After the success of our wedding, it was shortly followed by producing flowers for another family member’s wedding. Then Mum, inspired by these weddings, continued to experiment with different flowers and new designs until the house started resembling an indoor botanical garden. At this point, we finally decided that we should start showing them off.

So, that really brings us up to today. We’ve just launched our first batch of one-of-a-kind dried flower wreaths and bouquets online. If you’ve read all four parts of the history, you might have noticed us going full-circle; the story started with weddings and now after almost 20 years they have waltzed back into our lives.

What’s the future for us?

Well, more markets, candles and wreaths for sure. But we are also looking forward to working alongside more happy couples – creating bespoke bouquets, wreaths and decorations – to help make their day just as unique and special as ours was!

Thank you all once again for your continued support over the years and we look forward to many years of MAIDEN to come. It’s been great to look back over our history and we hope you’ve enjoyed learning some more about us too!

Much Love,
The MAIDEN Team
Ron, Carolyn, Josh, Xanthe & Toff