Pilar Jaramillo, a 49-year-old business administrator from Neiva, Huila, founded the Colombian candle brand Vemora on June 1, 2024, at her daughter’s wedding, after handing out soy wax candles made by hand with coffee grains and coffee aroma as wedding gifts and receiving her first commercial orders from other guests before the reception ended, launching what has since grown into a certified artisan brand with a trademark registration underway and plans for national and international distribution.
The name Vemora, shortened from “velas que enamoran” (candles that make you fall in love), reflects the brand’s commercial logic: Handmade aromatic and decorative candles with biodegradable waxes, combining fragrances, regional identity, and personal significance into objects that Jaramillo describes as items that “illuminate spaces and connect with emotions,” products positioned as carriers of meaning rather than generic decorative goods.
A wedding gift that became a business
Jaramillo holds a business administration degree, a specialization in human talent, and a master’s degree in human resources management; the decision to make candles arose from a personal impulse rather than a market analysis, and when orders arrived that same afternoon from wedding guests who wanted the same piece for themselves, she recognized that something made by hand had commercial potential independent of the occasion that originally inspired it.
Vemora currently operates across Neiva’s local and regional market, generating between US$840 and US$2,240 per craft fair event across roughly five annual fairs, with revenues in slower months running between US$140 and US$224; digital channels and direct client referrals complement the fair schedule, and the brand serves both individual buyers and businesses through personalized orders.
What separated Vemora from other artisan ventures in Neiva was not initial capital but method: Jaramillo funded the launch entirely from personal savings, then trained in fragrance selection, biodegradable wax formulation, and production techniques through trial and iteration, applying the discipline of a human resources specialist to a craft that most competitors in the segment develop by intuition rather than structured process, building a made-by-hand product with a level of consistency that small production volumes typically do not achieve.
An institutional ecosystem and the road to national scale
Market structures usually keep artisan brands small in secondary Colombian cities. Vemora broke that pattern by working closely with Cámara de Comercio del Huila, SENA, Infihuila, and Artesanias de Colombia. Those institutions trained the team, opened market opportunities, and guided formalization, enabling Jaramillo to grow the brand while keeping full ownership of the project she calls “something personal.”
In the first quarter of 2026, Vemora completed three parallel steps: a full brand image renewal, the opening of a trademark registration process, and a formal affiliation with the Corporación Autónoma Regional del Alto Magdalena (CAM), which recognized the brand as a “negocio verde” (an environmentally certified business), validating Vemora’s use of biodegradable waxes and positioning it for markets that apply sustainability criteria to purchasing decisions.
Regional identity as a commercial strategy
Vemora’s most commercially distinctive products incorporate Huila’s regional raw materials directly: Soy wax candles with coffee grain inclusions and coffee-derived fragrances reference the department’s position as one of Colombia’s principal coffee-producing regions, and Jaramillo plans to develop this into a certified regional identity product line, a category that Artesanias de Colombia uses to give artisan producers institutional support for both domestic fair distribution and export positioning.
Meanwhile, Jaramillo concludes a digital marketing course with a territorial identity focus through Artesanías de Colombia and the Universidad Nacional, addressing the specific challenge that artisan brands from regions like Huila face when translating a made-by-hand identity into digital platforms that tend to strip the regional specificity distinguishing products like Vemora from mass-produced alternatives available at lower prices.
In Vemora, the Colombian candle brand, as well as in some small Colombian cities, trained entrepreneurs convert artisanal skills into market traction and scale through institutional networks that protect local identity. Professional discipline, craftsmanship, and public support now power one of the country’s liveliest small‑business ecosystems beyond Bogota, Medellin, and Cali.