How family tragedy sparked Aussie mum’s crystal candle business

An Aussie mum has detailed how she went from quitting her corporate job to packing orders in her family’s laundry room to building a multi-million dollar business.

Janelle Palibrk, from Melbourne, was working as a fragrance specialist when a family tragedy struck in October 2018.

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After losing her dad unexpectedly, the family was struggling with grief - leaving her at a low point in her life.

But little did she know her dad’s sudden death would be the driving force behind her now-thriving crystal candle brand Myles Gray - with the business making more than $4 million in sales over the past two years.

Long before her success, Palibrk was climbing up the corporate ladder - when her career came to a halt.

“My dad passed away suddenly, and his death shocked our whole family. I was personally feeling so lost,” Palibrk, now 31, tells 7Life.

”The day after my dad’s funeral, the flowers we were given from friends and family started to die, and this truly triggered grief in my mum I had not yet seen.

“It cemented that death is final and he was never coming home.”

Her son Myles was just two years old when he lost his grandad.

“Myles was my dad’s little best mate. They did everything together and my parents often looked after Myles for me because of my long and stressful work hours,” she says.

“So when dad died, I wanted to help Myles and my family heal as much as possible.”

As she struggled to cope with the loss, Palibrk found strength and comfort whenever she used candles in her daily meditation.

With years of experience working with the world’s best perfumers, she decided to replicate the fragrances from the flowers sent after her father died, so she could make a scented crystal-infused candle.

”I created a candle for my mum that smelled like her house when it was filled with flowers after my dad’s funeral,” she says.

“I wanted her to smell it every day and be reminded of dad.

“I added crystal in the bottom of the candle to help protect her and allow her to move forward when the time is right.

“After mum used my candle, she confided in me and mentioned that she has not felt as calm as she did when the candle was burning.

“A lightbulb went off and I knew I had to help others through tragic times like this.”

Palibrk invested just $500 into her business Myles Gray after she quit her full-time job.

“While $500 doesn’t sound like a lot of money, to us at the time it was huge,” she says.

“I made all of our marketing material by hand, I invested in our raw materials and hand made every single product.

“I quit my job so I had no security and I was all in with our business. I sacrificed so much... and we were solely surviving off my husband’s income.

“If this didn’t work, we had no plan B, so I wasn’t prepared to fail.”

With hardly any space in her home, Palibrk took over the laundry room to start her business in 2019.

“I have a really long laundry and folding bench and I would line up about 100 candles for each pour,” she says.

“I had a double boiler system set up on my washing machine with an electric cooktop and I would pour my little heart out.”

When she was pregnant with her second child, the mum was still powering through with orders.

“I was 35 weeks pregnant and was still hand pouring candles in the laundry,” she says.

As the business took off, she went from moving her growing stock into the family’s garage to her first warehouse three months later.

But her journey to success hasn’t been easy.

“There are challenges every day,” Palibrk says.

“My biggest challenge has been running and scaling this brand while raising my boys.

“I am pulled in 20 different directions at one given time and rarely have time for myself.

“We have also been faced with every global economic challenge we could manage, from COVID to the economy at the moment.

“Besides the usual staffing issues, cash flow and copy cats we have taken every challenge as a lesson and always learnt so much.

“It makes the negative times a little less heartbreaking.”

Despite the setbacks, the brand has been making between $80,000 and $200,000 in sales per month, with her candles now stocked in more than 270 stores around the world.

The crystals are sourced from a small family business in India while the candles are all poured by hand in her Melbourne warehouse so no machines are used in the production.

“As a fragrance expert the way we blend everything is very unique,” she explains.

“We work with individual notes and I blend them all to enhance the scent. We don’t just buy off the shelf. For each product, I’ve thought about the end result before anything, so what type of energy I want the product to bring.

“I then work backwards from the crystals to formulate the fragrance to ensure it complements the energy and the crystal healing the product will provide. You could say our candles embody the fragrance of the crystals.”

Her biggest sale to date was in 2022 when the business sold $100,000 worth of mystery boxes in just 17 minutes.

“When we had one of our birthday sales, I thought the website glitched because I could not believe the figures I was seeing in the time frame we were in,” she recalls.

“I feel very lucky and blessed to do what I love every day, although it can be hard and lonely at times.

“Each week I read our customer reviews and some of them bring me to tears.

“I am so honoured to help people through their darkest days and eventually find their light again.”

Healing crystals have become a multi-billion dollar industry, with the rise in popularity skyrocketing over the past decade.

“Crystals work in incredible ways. Whether you believe in them or not, I think you should try to be open minded because if you don’t try, you’ll never know,” Palibrk says.

“As children, we are often drawn to rocks and crystals and then as we age our third eye closes, taking with it that connection to mother nature and the freedom of healing we felt when we were younger.

“Crystals work off energy, they are made of atoms and found in rock formations in the earth.

“We as humans are made of atoms also, and the energetic fields we work in are the same as crystals, which is why I am such a big believer in the power of crystal healing.

“Now as a parent, I lean into crystals when my boys are emotional.

“It helps them connect to their spiritual side, it opens up communication and also allows them to explore their own self in their own way.”

With a busy work schedule, Palibrk always finds time for her two boys and husband.

“Okay, are you ready to be exhausted?” the mum says, laughing.

“I have Myles who is in primary school and my three-year-old Theo is with me every day besides Thursdays where he goes to daycare.”

Every morning from 7am, she starts her day by making breakfast for her family.

She drops Myles off at school and the heads into the office at 8.55am with Theo in tow.

Her day consists of meetings, email, general office tasks - all while keeping little Theo occupied with a movie, drawing or craft.

Between 11.30am and 12.30pm, her personal trainer arrives at her office for a one-hour workout.

Her afternoon involves a warehouse tour so she can check in with staff, organise production schedules and do quality checks on her range.

But her day doesn’t end there.

She runs off to do a school pick-up, cooks dinners, prepares her children’s lunchboxes for the next day, showers her kids and reads them a bed time story.

Once the kids are tucked into bed from 6pm, Palibrk tidies the home before finally spending some alone time reading a book or watching TV.

“From 9.30pm to 11.30pm, this is my work time. I put my headphones in and get so much flow work done,” she says.

“We are expanding into different countries and I am often working in different time zones.

“I’ll work until about 2am some nights, other nights I’m done by 10.30pm. This is the time where I am most creative and focused.

“Our home office is my sanctuary... Then yes, I do sleep.”

For those looking to start a business but don’t know where to begin, the CEO says: “Just start, you have nothing to lose. And if you lose, have you really lost?

“It sounds like a Dr Seuss quote but honestly what do you have to lose? A little bit of money, your ego might be a bit hurt but you’ll learn so much in the process.

“And if you succeed, you’ll wish you started even sooner.

“I will say, though, be prepared to work harder than you ever have before and make sure you are doing something you love.

“Because even after millions of dollars in revenue, there are weeks that I don’t take a wage.”

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