“From Avocation To Vocation: How I Turned My Hobby Into A Career” With Katie Roering of Fontana Candle Company

An interview with Phil La Duke

Ask your customer’s opinion/feedback. Frequently! You can guess all you want about how your customers view your business or think about your product. Why don’t you stop wasting your time guessing, and just ask them?

As a part of our series about entrepreneurs who transformed something they did for fun into a full-time career, I had the pleasure of interviewing Katie Roering. Katie Roering is the Co-Founder and CEO at Fontana Candle Company.

Katie is a career entrepreneur, having been self-employed since graduating college with a degree in Business Management in 2011. She has partnered in and helped found four companies in the last decade.

Most notable, at the age of 24, she helped found The Complete Canine Center. The 5,500 sq ft dog daycare, grooming, and training center located in Lancaster, PA quickly became a success. The Mobile Grooming unit they operated was completely booked at all times. In less than a year and a half in business, the company was named Best Groomer and Runner Up Kennel in a very competitive industry. The company repeated the awards the following year, beating out dog facilities that have been in business for decades. From Katie’s leadership at The Complete Canine Center, she was named Lancaster County’s Young Female Entrepreneur of the Year in 2016.

Katie learned invaluable lessons from operating her canine center. Most importantly, she learned to run your business like a marathon, and not a sprint. After three years of a grueling schedule, and a physically demanding job, she experienced extreme burnout and illness and had to walk away from her beloved canine center.

She never thought she would own a candle company, but Fontana Candle Co. was born in 2018. Created by Katie and her husband, Eric, Fontana was founded to provide the market with a non-toxic candle made from only all-natural ingredients: “It’s not just about candles. It’s about creating a happy, healthy lifestyle.” Their mission became…