Complete Candle Fragrance Oil Starter Collection for New Brands

Range architecture: four roles

Start with the fact: CSI does not sell a starter fragrance collection for new brands, and there is no fragrance combo pack, sample pack or starter kit of fragrance on the store. CSI sells every oil singly. For a brand that is the right way round. Your range is part of what makes the brand recognisable, and a pre-packed set would be the same set every other new brand could buy.

What a new brand needs is an architecture: a small number of roles, each with a job, a buying size and a reorder rule. Four roles cover almost every small launch range. The scents in the table are one worked example from CSI's in-stock catalogue; the roles are the part to copy.

The "job" column describes the role each scent is cast in; it is a planning description, not a claim about how any oil performs or sells. CSI does not publish sales figures. Your pre-launch test and your first weeks of sales will tell you whether each scent can do its job, and if one cannot, you recast the role, not the architecture. How to Choose Your First Fragrance Oil Collection for a Candle Brand covers choosing a first collection, and Best Fragrance Oils for a Small Candle Brand looks at oils for a small brand.

Stage 1: the pre-launch test

Before a brand commits to 500 g of anything, it should smell every scent in its own wax and jar. Eight of the nine scents have an in-stock 15 g, so the test costs ₹906.36. Sultan's Smoke is listed only from 100 g; as a Diwali-only edition, it can go straight into the opening order, or be tested at 100 g if you prefer.

Pour three 50 g test pots of each at 8% (4 g of oil and 46 g of wax per pot), cure them, and burn them side by side by role: heroes together, supporting together. You are checking two things: that each scent works in your wax, and that the heroes feel like heroes. If one hero feels weak beside the others, swap it now, while it is a ₹100 decision rather than a ₹2,000 one. How to Sample Candle Fragrance Oils Before Placing a Wholesale Order sets out a sampling routine, and I Want to Test 20 Candle Fragrances Before Launching My Brand — What Sample Sizes Should I Order? covers testing a wider shortlist.

Stage 2: the opening order

Heroes and the signature open at 500 g, because they carry most of the forecast and running out of them at launch is the costliest mistake a new brand can make. Supporting scents open at 100 g, the size where most oils reach their production price per gram. Limited editions open to their window: two 100 g bottles of Sultan's Smoke for a Diwali run of twelve candles, and 50 g of Jasmine Coconut Spa Ceylon to pour a few wedding-season samples before committing.

The heroes at 500 g are all at or near their best per-gram rate. Peach Melon Berry is ₹4.18 at 500 g, the same as its 100 g and 1 kg. Bergamot Amber is ₹5.44 against ₹5.60 at 100 g. Cinnamon Vanilla is ₹4.60 against ₹4.84. So the 500 g buys stock security at little or no premium, and moving to the kilo later would save little: for these three, 1 kg is within about 1% of 500 g per gram. Volume pricing beyond the listed packs is quoted on WhatsApp; no discount figure is published.

Stage 3: the twelve-week reorder plan

A reorder plan needs a forecast, and a new brand does not have one. So make an honest guess, label it as a guess and correct it weekly. The plan below uses an illustrative forecast: each hero sells three 200 g candles a week, the signature two, each supporting scent one, the Diwali edition two a week until Diwali, and the wedding edition one a week from week 6. Reorder whenever what is left would cover fewer than two weeks.

Read down each column. A hero's 500 g reaches its two-week trigger (96 g) in week 9, so each hero reorders 500 g once in twelve weeks. The signature starts with 500 g, uses 32 g a week and ends week 12 with 116 g, so it has not yet needed a reorder; on this forecast it would in week 14. Each supporting scent's 100 g lasts four to five weeks before the 32 g trigger, so supporting scents reorder in weeks 5 and 11. Delivery times are not published, so the two-week buffer is a working assumption; set yours from experience and widen it before festive peaks.

What each role costs in a candle

A brand's price list should know what each scent costs to pour. Here is the material cost of a 200 g candle at 8% for every scent, at the size it is bought in the plan: 16 g of oil, 184 g of Luxury Soy Wax Chunks (₹110.22), an Eco Thin C1 wick (₹5.90) and a White Matte Glass Jar (₹70.80). It excludes labour, packaging, freight and GST.

The signature is the dearest candle in the range at ₹330.28, and it should be: it is the scent the brand is built around, and it can carry the brand's top price. The heroes sit between ₹253.75 and ₹273.89, a tight band that makes them easy to price together. Best Fragrance Oil Combo for Starting a Candle Business shows how to price a range by cost band.

Launch mistakes the plan avoids

Buying every scent the same size. Equal quantities are the fixed-combo mistake: they run out of heroes and overstock supporting scents. Size by role. Candle Fragrance Oil Combo Pack in India makes the argument for weighting any combo.

Carrying a limited edition past its window. A Diwali scent left on the shelf in December is capital that waits a year. Buy the limited editions to the forecast, not to the bottle size.

Reordering when the bottle is empty. By then you have already lost sales. Weigh weekly and reorder on the trigger. How to Set Reorder Levels for Candle Fragrance Oils and How to Avoid Running Out of Best-Selling Candle Fragrances cover reorder levels and stockouts in more depth.

Frequently asked questions