Maine privacy proposal could snuff out our candle business
Thirteen years ago, my wife and I started making candles in an old boathouse on our property in Edgecomb. We started selling hand-poured soy wax candles that we scented and packaged to evoke our favorite place in the world: the Maine coast. Today, we supply L.L. Bean, Holy Donut, Bixby Bars and Whole Foods, and our candles are also sold in 350 specialty stores nationwide. We’ve got a beautiful studio on the Kennebec River and just opened a flagship store in Boothbay Harbor.
Ours is a classic old-fashioned small-business success story, but it’s also a digitally powered small-business success story. That’s something I’d really like Maine lawmakers to understand and appreciate as they consider a bill called An Act to Create the Data Privacy and Protection Act, which admittedly sounds like a good thing, but would really hurt small businesses by undermining the way our digital advertising works.
