Mei Xu is the founder of the multi-million dollar company Chesapeake Bay Candle (now part of the Yankee Candle family of brands) and author of the new book, BURN: How Grit, Innovation, and a Dash of Luck Ignited a Multi-Million Dollar Success Story.  Mei was born in China and she grew up in a time in the country when they were moving from being closed off from the rest of the world to a time when the country was trying to catch up with the rest of the world. Because of that she was one of the first students at the age of 12 to be able to learn a foreign language.  Being naturally good at learning and speaking English, Mei was able to get a job as a translator for The World Bank and she was supposed to continue working there after graduating, but she graduated in 1989, during the Tiananmen Square protests and because of that the government didn’t allow students to stay in the cities anymore. So she was forced to go to a far away town and work a very low-skilled job at a warehouse. Shortly after that she quit and she worked small jobs here and there until she decided to move to the US in 1991.    How Bloomingdale’s inspired Mei to start her own company When Mei moved to the US she worked in New York and she very vividly remembers her experiences going into Bloomingdale’s. In China she had never seen a store with an abundance of merchandise, and walking through a massive store with bright colors, beautiful clothes, great fragrances, etc...was as Mei describes it, a paradise.  She spent a lot of time going through all the floors of the store, but one thing she noticed was that the lower levels seemed to be more modern, while the further you went upstairs it became more and more dated. The top floor was filled with home goods, but instead of matching the clothes downstairs, which were sleek, modern, clean lines, and bold colors--it looked like you were walking into your grandma’s house.    Several times Mei would call her husband, who at the time lived in Washington D.C., and she would tell him how odd it was that the floors were so inconsistent. And he really encouraged her to focus on a business that would address that problem instead of working a job she didn’t really enjoy. So they started Pacific Trade International, where they sold textiles, fake trees, pillows, decorative candles and much more.  From selling endless home goods to focusing on candles With their new company Mei and her husband went to a smaller trade show in North Carolina to sell their items. They brought several items with them--everything from silk flowers to seat cushions--but the end result shocked them. One of the items they had with them was ball candles inside holders with stained glass that would create a pattern when the candle burned. At the end of their week at the trade show they realized they had sold $50,000 worth of product and every single order had a candle. That’s when they realized they needed to focus on candles. In the first five months of being in business they had sold more than a half million dollars in candles. But the next year they attended another trade show--but a much bigger one--and they found out they needed to pivot, because they didn’t sell very many candles at all. Based on feedback people felt that the special candles in stain glass were for holidays and not something that you use everyday.  And that’s when Mei realized that what she was missing was fragrance. So she went back to the drawing board and figured out how to add new, modern fragrances, bright and bold colors, and contemporary jars. She was able to travel around the world and find inspiration from countries like Germany to come up with an up-to-date version of candles that people would want to use everyday.  As Mei shares, “What I think we made a great difference also is to combine fragrances. Fragrance candles used to be pretty single dimension. So way back 20 years ago, you would only find a mulberry candle, or a vanilla candle,  or watermelon candle. You would