How Do I Compare Fragrance Suppliers Using Stability, Consistency, Hot Throw, Documentation, Price per Kg and Reorder Reliability?

Six criteria, each measured your way

Comparing fragrance suppliers fails when one criterion is measured precisely and the rest are guessed. Price arrives on a quotation to the paisa; stability, consistency and reliability arrive as impressions. The fix is to define each criterion as something you can observe in your own candles and records, score it the same way for every supplier, and weight it by how much it matters to your business.

The six criteria in the title work well as a set, as long as each one has a test behind it:

Notice that most of these need time. You cannot score stability or consistency from one sample. A fair comparison therefore runs for several lots and several months, and early scores should be marked provisional.

Turn price per kg into cost per good candle

Price per kg only becomes meaningful when it is converted into what one sellable candle costs. Take a worked example in Jasmine-type oils. Supplier A charges ₹3,923.00 per kg — the price CSI lists for 1 kg of Jasmine, used here because it is a real, checkable figure. Supplier B quotes an example ₹3,500.00 per kg. Both go into a 200 g candle in CSI 464 at 8% in a matte jar with an Eco C1 wick.

Supplier B saves ₹6.77 per candle on oil and still ends up ₹2.91 more expensive per good candle once its example reject rate is applied. The reject rates here are illustrative — yours come from your own records, and with equal reject rates Supplier B would win on cost. The point is the method, not the verdict. All figures exclude packaging, labels, labour, shipping and GST.

The weighted scorecard

Weights reflect your business, not a universal truth. A brand selling through stockists who hold stock for months should weight stability heavily; a maker selling within weeks of pouring might weight hot throw and price more. The weights below are an example.

The weighted total is each weight multiplied by its score, summed, then divided by five. For Supplier A: 25 × 4 + 20 × 4 + 20 × 4 + 15 × 5 + 10 × 3 + 10 × 4 = 405, and 405 ÷ 5 = 81. For Supplier B: 25 × 3 + 20 × 3 + 20 × 4 + 15 × 2 + 10 × 5 + 10 × 3 = 325, and 325 ÷ 5 = 65. These scores are invented to show the arithmetic; they are not a rating of CSI or of anyone else, and your own testing could reverse them.

Run the scorecard per oil rather than per supplier wherever you can. A supplier can be excellent on its woody and amber oils and weaker on a particular citrus, and a single company-wide score hides exactly the oil that is causing your complaints. Keep a row for each oil you actually buy, and let the supplier's overall standing be the pattern across those rows.

Collecting the evidence without a laboratory

Stability is the criterion most often skipped and most often decisive. CSI's oil pages publish no shelf life, storage temperature or ageing data, so there is no supplier figure to copy into your scorecard. Score stability from your own aged candles, and treat any supplier statement as a starting point to verify — in writing, per oil and per lot. If you use a warm cabinet to speed up the comparison, keep it controlled and supervised with a thermometer, and remember it ranks options; it does not predict a shelf life.

Using the result

A scorecard is a decision aid, not a decision. Use it to choose a primary supplier per oil, to identify which oils deserve a qualified second source, and to justify paying more per kg where stability and consistency protect a bestseller. Re-score every few months, because consistency and reliability are earned lot by lot.

Scoring reorder reliability fairly

Reorder reliability is the criterion most easily distorted by one memorable bad week. Score it from a simple log instead: for every order, record the date placed, the date received, whether every item arrived, whether the oil and lot were as ordered, and whether any pack was damaged. After ten or more orders, the ratio of complete, correct deliveries to orders placed is a fair number. CSI publishes no lead times, so judge every supplier against your own records rather than against promises, and plan your reorder point around the lead time you have actually experienced.

Be wary of the opposite trap too: a supplier who wins on every criterion today has only been measured on the lots you have seen. Keep retaining samples and confirming lots, whoever you buy from.

And keep the commercial honesty that makes the exercise worth doing. If your own numbers show that a cheaper oil from another supplier performs as well in your candles over your holding period, the scorecard should say so — even if that supplier is not us.

Where this page fits

CSI already has guides that cover parts of this question. This page answers one fragrance-ageing decision; these cover the neighbouring questions:

Three things to buy for this decision

Frequently asked questions