A 1 Kg Fragrance Oil Is Much Cheaper per Gram than 100 g — How Quickly Should I be Using a Fragrance Before Moving to the Larger Pack?

Checking the premise, oil by oil

Ninety-one oils in CSI's Fragrance Oils collection list both a 100 g and a 1 kg. Dividing each price by its grams and comparing the two gives the spread in the diagram above. For 52 oils the kilo is within 1% of the 100 g per gram: ten 100 g bottles cost within a rupee or two per 100 g of one kilo. Another 15 save between 1% and 5%. Only 24 save 5% or more: 10 between 5% and 10%, 10 between 10% and 20%, and 4 at 20% or more. A few oils run slightly the other way, such as Dahlia (BBW Inspired), Love Spell and Pomegranate Splash, whose kilo costs fractionally more per gram than the 100 g.

Look at the last column. For Blue Ocean, Wild Berries and Love Spell, the kilo is no cheaper per gram, so no usage makes it pay on price. For Sandalwood it saves nothing at all. For Lavender (₹5.40 against ₹5.22) and Dark Vanilla (₹7.90 against ₹7.65), the small saving only covers the kilo's extra holding once you use around 197 g and 203 g a month respectively, at the example rate. For these oils the money is marginal at best. Move to the kilo because reordering 100 g bottles every week is a nuisance, or because you cannot afford to run out, not because the kilo is cheaper.

The 24 oils where the kilo saves

Here is every oil whose 1 kg costs at least 5% less per gram than its 100 g on the pull date, in order of saving. The usage column is the monthly amount at which the kilo's saving covers the cost of holding it, at an example holding rate of 1.5% a month (18% a year, a placeholder for your own cost of money). The stock column matters: 19 of the 24 are buyable at both sizes. An out-of-stock size is not a price you can plan around.

Every break-even in the table is small: a few candles' worth of oil a month. That is the arithmetic of a big saving against a modest holding rate. Buying a kilo instead of 100 g bottles as you need them adds about 450 g of average stock, and at 1.5% a month that costs a few rupees a month; a 10% saving on even 100 g of use a month is worth more. So for the savers, holding cost is almost never the reason not to buy the kilo. The reason not to is further down the page: how long the kilo would sit if the scent sells slowly.

How fast is fast enough

Turn usage into candles and time. At 16 g of oil per 200 g candle (8% load), a kilo is 62.5 candles and a 100 g bottle 6.25. Here is how long one kilo of one scent lasts at different sales rates.

Here is a worked comparison for a scent selling 30 candles a month (480 g of oil), which a kilo covers for 2.1 months. For British Rose, the kilo saves ₹169.92 a month against 100 g bottles and costs about ₹20.71 a month in extra holding: ₹149.21 a month net. For Citronella the net is ₹2,274.41 a month. For Lavender, the saving is ₹85.92 against ₹35.24 of holding: ₹50.68 a month. Cash on the day is the other difference: a British Rose kilo is ₹3,068.00 up front, against ₹342.20 for a single 100 g bottle.

The real limit: demand and freshness

A scent's sales can stall on their own, even while your business grows: a season ends, a stockist drops it, a new scent takes its customers. When that happens, a kilo bought at 30 candles a month can become a kilo used at 10, and 2.1 months of stock becomes 6.3. Set a cap on months of cover per scent, and move to the kilo only when the kilo fits inside it at your current, not forecast, sales. A cap of about three months is a sensible working starting point for most small businesses; adjust it to your cash and your experience. My Candle Sales Are Growing Every Month — How Do I Know When Buying Larger Raw-Material Quantities Saves Money Rather than Creating Excess Stock? explains the stall test in full.

Freshness sets the outer limit. In general practice fragrance oil is kept tightly capped, in the dark and away from heat, and a bottle opened daily is exposed to more air than a sealed one. Shelf life and storage guidance differ by oil and are not published in the data this page uses, so ask CSI on WhatsApp for the oil's documentation before you hold months of it. When a kilo arrives, decanting half into a clean, dry, well-sealed bottle keeps the second half closed until you need it. I Have 20 Fragrances but Only Five Are Bestsellers — Should I Buy 1 Kg Fragrance Oils Only for Those Five and Keep Smaller Quantities of the Rest? applies the cap across a whole fragrance range.

The step that always pays

If the kilo saves money on only a quarter of oils, the 15 g → 100 g step saves on almost all of them. Of 55 oils listing both a 15 g and a 100 g, the 15 g carries a median 23.1% premium per gram. At 16 g a candle, pouring Lavender from 15 g testers costs ₹112.02 of oil per candle against ₹86.40 from the 100 g, ₹25.62 more on every candle. Any production still poured from testers should move to 100 g before you think about kilos.

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