I Want Three Candle Sizes in Five Fragrances — How Do I Calculate 15 SKU Combinations Without Accidentally Overbuying Raw Materials?

Fifteen SKUs is a grid, not a list

Three sizes in five fragrances gives fifteen sellable products, and the natural instinct is to plan fifteen small batches: "30 mini Peach Melon Berry needs this much wax, this much oil, these jars", fifteen times. Each of those small plans is arithmetically correct and the total is still wrong, because each one is rounded up to real packs on its own. Fifteen roundings leave fifteen remainders: a part-bag of wax per SKU, a part-bottle of oil per SKU, a part-pack of jars per SKU.

The way out is to lay the plan out as a grid — scents down the side, sizes across the top, units in the cells — and to notice that no raw material actually lives in a cell. Fragrance oil lives in a row: Peach Melon Berry is one oil whether it goes into a 50 g or a 500 g candle. Jars and wicks live in a column: a mini velvet jar does not care which scent fills it. Wax lives in the corner: every gram of every candle. So you calculate in the cells, sum along rows and columns, and round only at the edges.

What goes into each cell

Each cell's quantities come from the same per-unit split as every BOM in this series: oil = weight × 8%, wax = the rest, at a working load inside Premium Coconut Soy Wax CSI 468's published 13% ceiling. A mini is 4.0 g of oil and 46.0 g of wax; a standard 16.0 g and 184.0 g; a large 40.0 g and 460.0 g. The cell then gets its allowances: rejects as (units ÷ 0.97) and pour loss as × 1.05, both labelled working assumptions. Wick-test candles — two per size, six in all — are placed in the Peach Melon Berry row so only one scent carries test oil.

The mini is CSI's Heart Cutout Velvet Jar (₹45.00; listed at 50 g wax capacity, one of only two published fills, treated here as the finished fill). The 200 g and 500 g jars are the reader's own, so they appear as non-CSI lines. Wick candidates are Eco Thin C1 for the mini and Eco Thick C2 for the two larger sizes, to be confirmed in the test candles; CSI publishes no wick size per jar.

Fifteen kits versus one plan, priced

The biggest line is usually the oil, because oil bottles step in 15 g, 50 g and 100 g and every cell's remainder is a partly used bottle of the same scent. The wax line looks smaller per rounding but repeats fifteen times. Jars and wicks overbuy because packs come in fives, tens and twenties, and a cell of 4 large candles still needs a whole pack. Notice also that the per-SKU route buys more grams — 150 g of extra oil — which is not just money spent early: it is stock that sits partly used in fifteen places on the shelf.

The second overbuy: stocking every SKU as if it sells like the best

The grid above uses the reader's own unit plan, and it is deliberately uneven — Peach Melon Berry carries the most units, Cinnamon the fewest large candles. We make no claim about which of these will sell; CSI publishes no demand data and neither do we. The point is structural: a 15-SKU launch is fifteen bets, and the cheapest way to lose fewer of them is to make each bet smaller at the start. That means buying the first wave of the plan, not all of it.

Here is the same plan bought in two waves: wave 1 is the six test candles plus half of every SKU's units; wave 2 is the other half, bought scent by scent only for scents whose candles sell through. Wax is shared by everything, so splitting it costs little. Oil is where the protection is. If, say, Cinnamon sells nothing beyond the first wave, the full-plan route has already bought 3 × 100 g + 2 × 15 g of it (₹1,982.40); the two-wave route has bought 1 × 100 g + 1 × 50 g + 1 × 15 g (₹1,026.60).

Two honest caveats. Buying in waves can cost a little more per gram if a wave lands on smaller bottles — Roasted Coconut, for example, has no 500 g listing, so it jumps from 100 g bottles at ₹4.95 a gram to 1 kg at ₹4.00. And it adds an order and a delivery. Against that, the first wave of this plan commits ₹6,677.64 of oil instead of ₹12,661.02, and every rupee of the difference stays in cash until a scent has earned it. Which inventory to buy frequently and which in bulk and 5 deep fragrances or 15 thin ones take the cash side further.

The order, rounded at the edges

Labels are the one genuinely cell-level item, because each SKU prints differently. That is worth stating precisely, since it is where the per-SKU habit comes from: the label printer quotes per design, so makers start thinking of every material per design. Only the label is.

Related questions in this cluster

For the procurement structure itself, one combined plan for three sizes. To cut the number of materials before the grid grows, standardising ten SKUs and shared wax and jars with separate oils. For candles and melts in the same scents, combined fragrance purchasing. For the monthly version once the grid is selling, forecasting by SKU and combining twenty SKU BOMs. The template behind every cell is the product-idea-to-BOM sheet.

Frequently asked questions