While reconnecting with her mother who was going through chemotherapy in the winter of 2024, Tati Varjao took her, and other family members who had traveled from Texas, to Sea Love, a candle making shop in Naperville for a day of relaxation.
After only spending an hour there, Varjao, 46, fell in love with the place and realized how beneficial it was for herself and how it could help others.
“My mom was feeling good, it was just refreshing through all the struggles that we were going through, the treatments and the stress of the holidays and the winters all combined,” Varjao said. “That hour was incredible.”
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The next year, Varjao and her husband Miguel Salinas opened their own Sea Love franchise of Sea Love in Oak Park and are striving to provide that same calming feeling for the community that Varjao felt during that family outing.
They both had familiarity with Oak Park, but since opening in 2025 at 121 N Marion St., Varjao and Salinas have taken the time to get to know the community and understand who they’re serving.
Salinas, 45, went to school for school psychology and helped implement a mentoring program at Irving Elementary School and Varjao worked for an area pediatrician. So when they decided to start their own family-business venture, they knew Oak Park was a place where they could flourish.
“We want to be a pillar in the community. We just don’t want to come in and come out, that’s not how we go about doing what we do,” Salinas said. “There’s times where we tell people it’s like 45 minutes to an hour for an experience, but we could be talking for two hours, and for us, that’s more important.”
Their two children also work at the shop. The process of being able to work together was both exciting and nerve-racking for them, but Salinas knew working with his family was something he valued.
Regardless of how things were going, he knew he just wanted his family around.
“You win as a family, you lose as a family,” he said. “I’m okay with whichever one happens, but we did it together.”
The effort he sees from his loved-ones pushes and motivates him to work harder for the business and provide for customers.
Whenever someone walks in, the goal is for them to leave with a memorable experience. They want to take those that walk through their doors back to a faint memory buried deep in their memory through fragrances.
They’ll take a new customer through their inventory of over 100 scents for candles or to make custom fragrances.
Community members have taken to sharing their experience on social media, which has assisted in growing the business. Customers from out of state have come and made their own candles and fragrances just from hearing about it through TikTok and word-of-mouth, Salinas said.
Hispanic Heritage Month is recognized nationally through Oct. 15, and with the couple’s backgrounds and owning their storefront, the celebration is important for both of them and impacts how they run the shop.
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Varjao was born in Brazil and immigrated to Texas when she was around 11 years old. Salinas was born in Chicago, but his parents are from Mexico.
Within the nearly two dozen stores in the franchise, Salinas said his shop has the biggest candle-making bar of them all, something he said symbolizes the amount of space there is for everyone to come together — something reflective of his Hispanic heritage.
“Analytics will tell you you need to target a certain group of people, you need to look at, statistically, who’s bringing in what. But for me I’m like nah, we got a big bar here. If someone comes through that door and they want to make a candle, they want to enjoy the experience, everybody’s welcomed,” Salinas said.
For Varjao, to come from another country and open this shop is her way of honoring the sacrifices her family made for her, while also setting up a future for her own children.
“To see this little girl from Brazil being able to do something like this; if you tell somebody that, they’re like ‘no, that’s never going to happen,’ but it does happen,” Varjao said. “It takes a lot of work, but it does happen, it’s a dream.”