Inside the storefront of Cantrip Candles in Hollywood, CA.
Sarah Whitten | CNBC
It’s not every day that a spilled beer can start a company. But that’s exactly how Christoff Visscher got the idea for Cantrip Candles.
An avid Dungeons & Dragons fan, Visscher was hosting a game when a beer got knocked over during a rowdy tavern interaction. The malty scent added to the ambiance of the scene and inspired him to start making his own candles and fragrances to elevate his friend’s tabletop gaming experience.
Some seven years later, Visscher’s Cantrip Candles has a physical storefront in Hollywood and nearly two dozen custom scents — from the airy, pine-scented Walk in the Woods to the rich, smoky whiskey and firewood aroma of Black Hound Tavern.
Inspired by fantasy games and settings like those seen in Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder and other popular tabletop role-playing games, Cantrip Candles has created its own lore to pair with its scents. They include Library Scriptorium (parchment, aged wood, leather), Den of Thieves (smoke, red wine, aged leather) and Forest of Fae (jasmine, neroli, tomato leaf and amber), all locations that could be found in any fantasy world.
“We always make it our own,” said Visscher. “And that’s how we can be an authentic to ourselves. Sometimes, we create environments that aren’t the most traditional fantasy environments. We have a scent called Goldwheat Bakery.” It smells like yeast, bread and flour.
Products from the company range from $15 for wax melts all the way up to $99 for 20-ounce centerpiece candles. Cantrip Candles also partners with other small businesses to sell wick trimmers, matches, notebooks, plush and apparel.
Sellers need to be on their game with these customers, too.
“They expect you to respect, understand and anticipate their needs, even though the problems you’re solving can be extremely niche,” said Ed Maranville, co-founder of Wyrmwood, a tabletop gaming accessory and furniture company.
Hasbro, which owns the Dungeons & Dragons brand through its subsidiary Wizards of the Coast, has boasted that the game has more than 50 million active players. These consumers have consistently boosted sales for Wizards, pushing the division’s revenue to over $1 billion in each of the last two years.
Hasbro acquired Wizards of the Coast, the company that owned the rights to Dungeons & Dragons, in 1999. The Rhode Island-based toymaker is protective of its intellectual property. It recently tried to revamp its game license to crack down on third-party content creators and boost revenue. However, those plans were shot down in January, as the D&D community balked at the new terms, which were largely viewed as overreaching and unfair.
The company did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The shopper cohort that stocks up on fantasy-themed lifestyle merch is often grouped as “kidults.” Essentially, this customer is 12 or older and spends money on collectibles, toys or merchandise. Last year, these kids-at-heart were responsible for one-quarter of all toy sales annually, around $9 billion worth, and were the biggest driver of growth throughout the industry, according to data from the NPD Group.
Kidults buy other products linked to their interests, like furniture, art and even alcohol. And there are plenty of companies offering up unique, quality products for fantasy tabletop gamers.
Matthew Lillard, co-founder of Find Familiar Spirits. “The industry sort of discounts their buying power. They’re like, ‘Oh, they just want dice,’ but the reality is that I want something that speaks to me as a modern human. I want to be able to live it on my own.”
Lillard, who rose to fame in the ’90s and early ’00s for roles in films like “Scream” and “Scooby-Doo,” is an avid Dungeons & Dragons player and fan of the fantasy role-playing genre. This week his new company, Find Familiar Spirits, which he founded alongside screenwriter Justin Ware, is launching its first in a series of limited edition whiskeys.
Distilled in Indiana and Kentucky, the first whiskey edition, which has an initial run of 5,000 bottles, is called Paladin, named for the playable class in classic tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. It’s a bourbon whiskey blend with notes of vanilla, fruit and a little spice and will retail for $150.
Three other whiskeys — Rogue, Warlock and Dragon — will roll out at later dates under the banner Quest’s End Whiskey. Early interest in the product has led the company to expand the number of bottles produced going forward.