Two sisters from Bucks who have amassed over 150k followers on TikTok said they have been targeted by trolls who are jealous of their rapid success.

Kirsten Wilson, 26, and Danielle Neville, 28, began crafting wax candles as a way to unwind after work in 2021. After they began putting their creations up for sale and recognised a demand for the hand poured products, they began branching out and advertising on social media. In no time at all, they had attracted over 100,000 followers on TikTok, a number that has since grown to over 150,000.

Flash forward to today and the two girls run a fully functioning business called The Melting Shack, with a manufacturing unit based in their hometown of Milton Keynes. Alongside hundreds of types of candles, they now also sell burners, diffusers, bath bombs and even pick’n’mix sweets, shipping to buyers all over the world.

But it hasn’t been an easy journey. Kristen said she and Danielle attribute much of the business’s success to the following it attracted on TikTok (new product reveals and demonstrations make up the bulk of the account’s content) but building a career on a social media app can be a double-edged sword.

“It has been very hard at times. I think growing so rapidly in such a short amount of time naturally come with the negative impact of trolling. It might be a jealousy thing – some people don’t like seeing people go from nothing to something so quickly.

“When we started, I’d sometimes go live on TikTok then go off and just cry because of all the comments, making little digs about our appearances and things like that. I’ve got thicker skin now. All that really matters is that we’re happy and we’re stronger for overcoming those hurdles.

“At the start it was very difficult, just because it was so new, and we didn’t expect it.”

Before the business really took off, Kirsten worked as a full-time retail supervisor – at the beginning, she would go home on her lunch breaks to make wax melts in the kitchen. Before long, she decided to take a leap and leave her job to commit fully to the new venture, a move she said wasn’t an easy one to make.

 

@the_meltingshack New custom mixes available on the TikTok shop😊 #picknmix #themeltingshack #usa #sweets #custommixes #packinglive #fullystocked #livepacking ♬ original sound - ⚡️

“It felt like a risk – coming away from a full-time job and guaranteed income. It was scary! I didn’t like the idea of putting all my eggs in one basket and not necessarily benefiting from it. But Danielle suggested we try to focus on building the business through TikTok, and it just blew up, almost within a few weeks.”

The two friends also set up accounts on Facebook and Instagram, but TikTok bought them the biggest audience by far. Videos of their new pick’n’mix range attract thousands of views and orders flood in everyday from customers in the US, Canada and Australia.

While Kirsten acknowledges that businesses built on social media can be unreliable, she thinks The Melting Shack has tapped into a niche that will only continue to expand in its reach.

“Social media is unpredictable which is scary. TikTok is responsible for about 90% of our sales but we put lots of time into it – we go live every day, and people watch us package up their orders, ready to send off.

“What really makes it worth it is when little children will come up to us in the supermarket and say they recognise us and what we do. You’ve just got to focus on the positive and forget everything else.”