This is what we believe. This is why we exist. No fluff. No corporate speak. Just the truth.
The world is full of companies selling you aspirations wrapped in plastic. Buy this candle and you'll find inner peace. Use this app and your life will transform. Subscribe to this service and you'll finally be the person you always wanted to be.
It's utter marketing bullshit.
We make products that do what they're supposed to do. Our candles light your space and smell good. Our apps solve specific problems without feature bloat. Our games entertain without manipulating you. That's it. No mystical promises. No transformation mythology. Just functional products for functional people.
Everyone claims to be eco-friendly now. It's trendy. It sells. But let's talk about soy candles for a second.
Soy is marketed as the green alternative to paraffin. Sounds great, right? Except soy production requires massive monoculture farming. To grow soy at scale, you till the earth—destroying ecosystems above and below ground. You kill the insects, the microorganisms, the small mammals, everything that isn't profitable. But nobody talks about that because beetles and earthworms aren't cute enough for your Instagram feed.
We use beeswax. Bees produce it naturally as part of their lifecycle. No tilling. No habitat destruction. No mass death. When you buy our beeswax products, you're supporting Canadian beekeepers who maintain healthy hives. You're supporting pollinators that are actually critical to ecosystems. That's real sustainability, not the kind that just sounds good in marketing copy.
We could make more money if we lied to you. We could use cheap soy and charge premium prices. We could add unnecessary subscription fees to our apps. We could load our games with pay-to-win mechanics and loot boxes. We could slap "organic" and "natural" on everything and call it a day.
But we won't. Because that would make us just like every other company that treats customers like wallets with legs. We're building Northern Dread for the long term, and that means earning your trust by actually deserving it.
When we say something, we mean it. When we make a product, it does what we say it does. When we charge you money, you get value for it.
Simple concept. Shockingly rare.
Complexity is profitable. The more features you cram into an app, the more you can charge. The more steps you add to a process, the more "premium" it seems. The more jargon you use, the smarter you sound.
We're not interested in complexity for its own sake.
Our apps do one thing and do it well. Our products have ingredients you can pronounce. Our games have clear objectives and fair mechanics. We're not trying to impress you with how complicated we can make things. We're trying to solve your actual problems as simply as possible.
Life is complicated enough. Your products shouldn't add to that.
The tech industry has perfected the art of manipulating you. Fake scarcity ("Only 3 left in stock!"). Social proof notifications ("287 people are looking at this right now!"). Countdown timers. Auto-renewal. Making it easy to subscribe but hard to cancel. Free trials that hope you forget to cancel.
These aren't features. They're psychological tricks designed to separate you from your money against your better judgment. It's predatory. It's disrespectful. And we want no part of it.
Our apps and websites treat you like an intelligent adult. Buttons do what they say they do. Prices are clear. If you want to cancel something, it takes one click. We make our money by providing value, not by tricking you.
Your data is valuable. Tech companies know this. That's why they harvest everything they can—your location, your browsing habits, your contacts, your messages, your purchases—and sell it to the highest bidder. Then they hide behind terms of service written by lawyers to obscure what they're actually doing.
We don't do that.
We collect only what's necessary to make our products work. We don't sell your data. We don't share it with "partners" (read: advertisers). We don't build profiles on you. Your information is yours. Period.
This means we make less money than we could. We're okay with that. Your privacy isn't for sale.
We live in a world obsessed with speed. Ship fast. Iterate quickly. Move fast and break things. Launch now, fix later. Minimum viable product.
Fuck that.
We release products when they're ready, not when some arbitrary deadline demands it. We'd rather take an extra month to get it right than rush something half-baked into your hands. Our apps work. Our products perform. Our games are finished.
You deserve better than beta testing someone else's unfinished product.
Nothing hits harder than life. We know that. Rent is expensive. Jobs are stressful. The world is overwhelming. Climate change is real. Politicians lie. Everything costs more than it should. You're tired.
We're not going to pretend we can fix all that. But we can make parts of your day a little easier. An app that actually helps you budget. A candle that creates a calm space without toxic chemicals. A game that entertains without extracting a subscription fee.
Small things matter. We're focused on making products that make your life marginally better, because we know you're dealing with enough as it is.
Northern Dread is young. We're small. We're building as we go. But we're not naive—we know the temptations that come with growth. We've seen other companies start with good intentions and sell out the moment it's profitable. We won't. These principles aren't negotiable. When someone offers us money to compromise, we'll say no. When the easy path diverges from the right path, we'll take the hard one. This is who we are.
We're building the company we'd want to buy from. Products we're actually using. Values we can actually stand behind. Honesty we can actually deliver.
If that resonates with you, welcome. If it doesn't, that's fine too. We're not for everyone. But we're definitely for the people who are sick of being lied to, and want functional in a dysfunctional world.
Don't take our word for it. Try our products. Use our apps. Play our games. See if we deliver on what we promise.