“We’re still kind of in the infant stages, but it’s hard to believe ,” said Stephanie. Stephanie’s decision paid off, and within its first year of operation, Trade Secrets did more than $200,000 in sales - an annual figure that has continued to grow since. Rather than finding another job, Stephanie decided to pour her efforts into marketing Trade Secrets and the company’s line of products, which now included all-natural lip balms, soy wax melts and candles, body butters, body lotions, bath bombs and handmade bath bars, all priced at less than $15. Then, in July 2017, she was let go from her former position - an unexpected event that would soon prove to have a major silver lining. In the early months of Trade Secret’s shop operation, Stephanie Hite remained working full-time, with limited hours available to devote to the new business. So, in February 2017, the Trade Secrets shop opened at 1223 13th Avenue in Altoona, where it has continued to grow ever since. It was not long before the Hites recognized that there was a demand for what they were producing and that they had a chance to take their business beyond their own dining room - at the very least to give their friends a place to shop outside of their own home.
“I would actually meet people at convenience stores to buy the products.” “I would go on local yard sale sites, and I would sell the products on there,” explained Stephanie Hite, who also started the Trade Secrets Skincare Facebook page around the same time.
In addition to the open houses within her own home, Stephanie Hite began attending vendor events and finding unique ways to sell the products, which soon included whipped body butters, handmade bath bars and lip balms. “People would come into our home, and I would actually have open houses on Saturdays and Sundays for family and friends to come and shop.” “We really didn’t anticipate it being anything more than a side hobby, but within the first year of doing this, it got to the point where we had shelving in our dining room stocked with products,” said Stephanie Hite, who leveraged her sales background to market the products made by her husband. The Hites gave the resulting soy candles and wax melts away as gifts, and before long, fueled by requests from friends and family, Andrew Hite began researching and exploring other products to make as well. When Trade Secrets unofficially began in 2016, Stephanie Hite, a graduate of Altoona’s Bishop Guilfoyle Catholic High School, was working full-time in sales, and her husband had decided to pursue something that had long interested him: making candles. Instead, the growth is largely a result of Andrew Hite’s high- quality products and Stephanie Hite’s business savvy.
The seemingly rapid success of the Hites’ company, Trade Secrets, is not luck or a secret, however. When Stephanie Hite and her husband, Andrew Hite, sold their first candles to family and friends only three and a half years ago, they never would have guessed that those candle sales would evolve into what they have today: an expanding shop in downtown Altoona and a business poised to do $500,000 in sales in 2019. People would come into our home, and I would actually have open houses on Saturdays and Sundays for family and friends to come and shop.” – Stephanie Hite, co-owner, Trade Secrets. “We really didn’t anticipate it being anything more than a side hobby, but within the first year of doing this, it got to the point where we had shelving in our dining room stocked with products.
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