Nate: My team and I, before we were really even a team, would always throw ideas around. It wasnt until we started seeing these “co-creation” sites, like blank-label.com, and youbar.com, etc  that we really fell in love with the business model and and knew thats what we needed to do. We all brainstormed on what the best  co-creation type business we could start, and candles just kept popping up as a perfect fit.

None of us really knew anything about actually making candles and it didnt help that we were all men, but we didnt let that stop us. We had a gut feeling about the idea, and we went for it. I think it was May 2010 when we started, and it was 5 months later when we decided that things were not turning out the way we wanted, so we decided to scrap about 90% of the work. We brainstormed some more and pivoted the idea to what it is today.

Stella: What did you do when it came time to accept payments?

Nate: Prior to actually needing a payment processor for AromaPersona, I had little to no experience. I dabbled with PayPal and Google Checkout a bit, but never went beyond those. I knew for AromaPersona though, I would need to get a “real” processor. It just happened that I came across Feefighters at the right time.

Stella: That’s awesome! How’d you hear about us?

Nate: Believe it or not I first heard about FeeFighters, back when it was transfs. Sean Harper was on a mixergy.com interview about a year ago, and was talking about his new company. When things are interesting to me, or i think they will have utilty in the future I email myself a link and a brief description. At the time i really had no use for a merchant account, but a few months later, when we started to build AromaPersona, I remembered that link.

Stella: What was the process of choosing a processor like on FeeFighters? What aspects did you like best? Least?

Nate: Since FeeFighters is my first experience with obtaining a merchant account, I dont have much to compare it to, however I can honestly say without FeeFighters, I really didnt have a good direcition to go, at the time this was a completely new process to me. So using Feefighters was a Godsend. If I could sum Feefighters up in one word, I would have to say they are “Incredible!” They have a huge amount of information about each processor, and wonderful decriptions to help make consise decisions. It truly makes things effortless.

Stella: Wow, thanks for the kind words. It really is our mission to make choosing a payment processor as painless as possible. Can you tell me what happened next?

Nate: When I first knew I was going to need a merchant services provider, I went to Feefighters and selected a processor. Mark Verrico from CoCard reached out to me, but at the time I was not exactly ready to take my site live, I still had a few months left of development. When that time came, I reached out to Mark again, and we got things started. I think the turn around from start to finish was about 3-4 days, pretty outstanding! The underwriters at Cocard had a few questions about my billing structure, but after I cleared those things up, I was approved and on my way. Mark is a great guy, and he is really willing to work to get you up and running as soon as possible. Cant praise him enough!

Stella: Give us an update: how are things going now?

Nate: We are still in early stages of business, learning on the go and dealing with all the many unforeseen issues that come up, but so far so good. We have high hopes for AromaPersona and a ton of items on our “to-do list”. Getting to do everything we want to can be quite challenging, but keep an eye on us, and you will see great things to come!