Martin and Nicholas Yaddow are building Simply Gemuine one fragrance, one customer and one idea at a time, with a vision that reaches far beyond the products on their table today.

By Sara Turney

Spend a little time talking with Martin Yaddow about Simply Gemuine and it quickly becomes clear that he does not suffer from a shortage of ideas.

There are the products he and his son, Nicholas, are already selling, including car diffusers and fragrance oils for wax and oil warmers. Then there are the possibilities Martin sees ahead: candles and wax melts, lotions and body mists, room sprays, soaps, detergents and, eventually, an expansion into gemstones and jewelry.

There is even an idea for a slime bar where children could create their own slime.

Some businesses begin with a tightly drawn map of exactly where they intend to go. Simply Gemuine feels more like a business whose map is still being drawn by the people building it.

That is part of its charm.

Martin is building Simply Gemuine with Nicholas, his teenage son, and the business has become an opportunity for the two of them to create something together while learning what their customers respond to along the way.

For Martin, that makes the work about more than fragrance.

He is thinking about what he can build, what he can teach and what his son might carry forward from the experience.

Start with the car diffuser

If you are meeting Simply Gemuine for the first time, the car diffusers are a good place to begin.

They are one of the products at the center of the business today, bringing fragrance into a place where most of us spend more time than we probably care to calculate.

A favorite scent can change the feel of a car almost immediately, and the format makes the product easy to enjoy without adding another candle or warmer to the house.

Simply Gemuine also offers fragrance oils designed for wax and oil warmers, giving customers another way to bring the scents they like into their everyday spaces.

Fragrance is personal in a way that is difficult to capture on a screen. A description can tell you whether something is fruity, clean, warm, sweet or woodsy, but eventually you have to smell it.

That makes Simply Gemuine particularly suited to festivals and markets, where customers can stop, explore and decide for themselves what they like.

One person may walk away with the scent they expected to choose. Someone else may discover that the fragrance they would never have ordered online is the one they cannot stop smelling.

For a business like Simply Gemuine, that discovery is part of the experience.

A father and son at the table

Nicholas is 15, which makes the father and son partnership one of the most interesting parts of Simply Gemuine.

Martin brings years of experience from the Marine Corps, restaurants and corporate work. Nicholas is getting a much earlier introduction to what it means to help build something of your own.

The difference in their ages and experiences gives the business an unusual foundation.

Martin has spent much of his adult life working for other people. Now, while continuing to work a full time job, he is putting time into a business he and his son can shape themselves.

That experience has influenced the kind of company he hopes Simply Gemuine can become.

Martin thinks seriously about how people should be treated at work. His years in restaurants and corporate environments left him with strong opinions about leadership, respect and what employees need from the people responsible for them.

Simply Gemuine gives him an opportunity to put those ideas into practice as the business grows.

It also gives Nicholas something valuable long before most people begin thinking about ownership: a view of how a business is actually built.

Not simply the finished table at a festival, but the decisions behind it.

Products have to be chosen. Customers have to be understood. Money has to be managed. Ideas have to be tested. Some things will work better than others.

Those lessons are difficult to learn from a textbook.

A business with room to become more

The name Simply Gemuine may become attached to far more than fragrance if Martin's long term plans take shape.

He sees the current product line as a beginning.

Candles and wax melts are natural extensions of the fragrance business. Lotions, body mists and sprays could take those scents into personal care. Detergents and soaps would move them further into the home.

Then the vision widens.

Martin is interested in gemstones and fine jewelry, with the possibility of eventually incorporating them into the business. He also sees room for experiences, including the slime bar concept for children.

It is an ambitious list, and Martin does not talk about it as though all of it is arriving tomorrow.

These are directions.

The business still has to grow into them.

That distinction is important because one of the pleasures of following a young small business is seeing which ideas eventually become real. Customers influence that process more than they may realize. What people stop to smell, what they purchase, what they return for and what they ask about all help an owner understand where the strongest opportunities might be.

Simply Gemuine is still in that exciting stage where the future has plenty of room.

Building something differently

Martin's ambitions are not limited to the products he hopes to sell.

He also thinks about the kind of workplace he wants to create if Simply Gemuine grows large enough to employ more people.

His previous professional experiences have shaped that thinking. He wants employees to feel respected and valued, and he believes leadership should recognize that people have lives beyond the hours they spend working.

Those ideas are personal to him.

They also connect naturally to the fact that he is building the company beside his son.

A business can teach a young person plenty about sales and entrepreneurship. It can also teach them what kind of leader they might want to become.

Martin has an opportunity to demonstrate that in real time.

There is no guarantee that Nicholas will eventually choose the same path his father imagines for the company. That is part of growing up.

For now, though, they have something they are creating together.

That is worth enjoying while it is happening.

Find your scent

At a festival, Simply Gemuine invites the kind of browsing that is difficult to rush.

You have to smell things.

Pick up the car diffusers. Explore the fragrance oils. Ask Martin and Nicholas what people have been responding to. Then ignore everyone else's opinion for a minute and decide which one you actually like.

That is the fun of fragrance.

There is no universal correct answer.

The scent one customer cannot live without may be the one another customer puts down immediately. Finding your favorite requires a little curiosity.

It also gives Martin and Nicholas an opportunity to do what they enjoy about the business: meet people, talk about what they are building and learn from the customers standing in front of them.

Those conversations are helping shape what Simply Gemuine becomes next.

Building the future together

Simply Gemuine is still growing into its larger vision.

Founded in 2024, Simply Genuine first began with candles, a product line the company plans to bring back. The turning point came at a car show, when a customer mentioned car fresheners. They took the suggestion and ran with it, developing a line of car diffusers that quickly became one of their greatest successes. Today, the collection includes more than 340 scents and continues to grow rapidly.

That same commitment to premium, long lasting fragrance has since expanded into wax and oil warmer oils. Although the line was introduced only recently, customers have already responded enthusiastically, giving Simply Genuine another promising path for growth.

There are more products Martin wants to develop, more categories he wants to explore and eventually, perhaps, physical stores where those ideas can live together.

For now, the business is being built much more personally.

A father works a full time job and builds a company alongside his teenage son. They take products to festivals, meet customers, learn what people like and think about what they might create next.

There is ambition in that, certainly.

There is also time together.

Years from now, Simply Gemuine may look very different from the business customers encounter today. The product line may be larger. Some of Martin's ideas may have become entire parts of the company. Other ideas may have given way to better ones.

That is how businesses grow.

What will not change is where this one began.

Martin and Nicholas started building it together.

For a father with a long list of ideas about business, leadership and the future, that may turn out to be one of the most valuable things they create.

Meet Simply Gemuine: A Father, a Son and a Business They’re Building Together