On August 1, 2008, when Heidi Luks-Stojanović arrived in Fort Smith, she was met by fiery Arkansas heat, which reached 102 degrees Fahrenheit that day. She’d flown in from her home in the northern European country of Estonia, near the Baltic Sea, where temperatures in August range between seventy and eighty degrees average.
The heat might have been a deal breaker if not for the kindness of the locals. “That Southern charm got to me pretty quickly,” said Heidi (pronounced Hay-Dee). She found the people warm, open, and less reserved than she was used to.
“In Tallinn, the capital city where I lived, there were about 400,000 people. Fort Smith felt like a small town to me, in the best possible way.” At the time, Fort Smith’s population was approximately 87,000. Today, it is nearly 90,000.
Heidi had come to play volleyball for UAFS Coach Jane Sargent. The Lady Lion won multiple awards in the years she played, including two MVPs. She graduated in 2013, and in 2019, Heidi was inducted into the UAFS Lions Athletics Hall of Fame. At that time, Coach Sargent called her “a once-in-a-lifetime recruit” and “arguably the best player to ever wear a UAFS uniform and play in the Heartland Conference.”
Heidi studied biology and chemistry at UAFS. After graduation, she worked at Peterson Chemical Technology, where she’d been interning. Eventually, she was promoted to Director of Research and Development.
More than 5,000 miles away in Tallinn, her sister Sirli Luht was on her own career path. One day, Sirli assembled a child’s craft candle with small-grained wax pellets made to resemble sand. The candle sparked an idea. What if she could create a high-end version?
“The one I had smelled like soot. It had a lot of chemicals,” Sirli says. “It wasn’t something I’d feel comfortable burning with my kids in the house. But if we could clean it up, make it non-toxic and plant-based, reinvent it for adults, we would have something.”
Heidi, a chemist, was the perfect person to try. After work and on weekends, she experimented. “We were trying to solve a problem. If you love [traditional] candles, you burn them for a while, and they end up looking not so good. You also have a dilemma later with the container. Do you throw it away or go through the cleaning process and use it for cotton swabs? And how many cotton swab holders do you need?”
Within a year, Heidi had figured it out. The candles were even safe to use around dogs, cats, and birds. There is now a patent pending.
Sirli was in charge of packaging and design, but there was a hurdle to overcome. The product would come sealed in a box and unassembled. Inside would be several wicks and a generous amount of free-flowing wax pearls. Customers would have to trust the makers to describe the scent they were buying. Since choosing candles typically begins with the eyes and the nose, the box would have to be impressive, earth-friendly, plastic-free, and recyclable. Sirli ensured it was all of those things.
Still, Heidi blames Sirli for jinxing them. “She said, ‘Now that the wax is ready, the wicks will be easy.’ The wicks were not easy. The wax, the wicks, the fragrance, and the colors all have to work together to create a system that burns safely and long-term… It was a lot of learning and iteration.”
In 2020, the sisters were ready, and Foton Pearled Candles was born. Foton, or photon, means a particle of light. Sales were easy when Heidi could assemble a pop-up shop. She’d show customers how easy it was to remove the small puddle of melted wax that occurred during use. She’d replace the wick and make a brand-new candle. Online customers could browse the website and see the candles in use. They could also order fragrance and color samples. But brick-and-mortar retail, without those advantages, seemed daunting.
In 2021, Heidi left her career in chemistry to focus on the company. Her husband, a CPA, wasn’t confident the numbers worked, but the sisters had a gut feeling. That same year, Sirli and her family moved to Fort Smith.
One day, Heidi accidentally knocked one of the lit candles to the floor. Panicked, she rushed to stop the fire from spreading. But there was no fire; the loose pearls had suffocated the flame. Heidi recreated the mishap again and again. The flame always died.
While sales were steady, the sisters knew they could be better. In 2022, they got serious about social media. “We had this idea [in the beginning] that we’d have a website, and customers would show up,” Sirli says. A build-it-and-they-will-come scenario. But that didn’t happen. So, the sisters dove into social media, learning all they could to promote their products.
Heidi points to the sofa in her office. “I remember sitting on this very couch and trying to figure out how to post on TikTok. I remember saying, ‘What have I done? I spent all these years on my career, and here I sit trying to figure out the TikTok algorithm.’ It looks fun and easy, but it’s so much work.”
The work paid off. Foton’s reach was growing, and hundreds of thousands were getting acquainted with their products by watching online videos and reacting to regular social media posts. Among their followers were big names in the candle industry, including a buyer for Home Goods. Heidi says, “She loved the brand and what we were doing… She wanted to put us in a lot of their stores… We were really hesitant about whether we should do it.”
Their doubt came from a logical place. Without an online video, or a live demonstration, the sisters had to rely on the packaging to entice shoppers. Sirli had done an amazing job designing the boxes, but they had to be sealed to protect the product. There was no way for a shopper in a bigger chain store to feel the wax beads or smell the fragrance.
After much discussion, they filled the Home Goods, T.J. Maxx, and Marshalls order and crossed their fingers. Sales were good but not through the roof, and their online customers were sending photos of opened boxes they’d come across in the stores, which made sense. Potential buyers wanted that tactile experience of traditional candle shopping. “We saw that it was potentially damaging to us, so we turned the buyer down the second time,” Sirli says. “We needed to focus on building the brand.”
They returned their attention to what they did best. Their social media platforms grew to include a million followers. So far, tens of thousands of Foton Pearled Candles have been sold online and in small boutiques where shopkeepers have the space to display a sample candle and the knowledge to describe its benefits.
The line now includes 150 products, including about twelve fragrances, some of them seasonal. The sisters have pulled all-nighters at Christmastime, filling orders so that their customers would have them in time. Their candles have been mentioned in Southern Living, the New York Post, the Daily Mail, and Country Living.
Their husbands are also involved in the family business, as are two of Sirli’s children. There are twelve employees, and they’re looking to hire more. The brand has gone global; even their friends and family in Estonia can buy them.
In the evening, Heidi often walks the trails near her Fort Smith home. Sirli lives nearby. When Heidi arrived in Fort Smith sixteen years ago, she planned to play volleyball at UAFS, get her degree, and fly back to Estonia. But the pull of Arkansas was too great. So, Heidi lured Sirli away from their home near the Baltic Sea, by creating a light for her to follow all the way to Fort Smith. And from that particle of light, they created something beautiful.
Foton Pearled Candles can be purchased from Black Bison in Fort Smith and online at fotoncandle.com.
