I'm Launching New Fragrances Every Month — How Do I Prevent Fragrance Oil Inventory from Becoming Too Fragmented as the Catalogue Grows?

Why monthly launches fragment stock

Fragmentation has a recognisable shape. The shelf fills with bottles that are each a third or a quarter full. Each one is a scent that sold for a while and then slowed. None is empty enough to throw away or full enough to matter. Together they hold a surprising amount of cash, and every one of them is a line in your stock count, a label on your website, and a question from a customer who liked it once.

It happens for three reasons, and all three are purchasing decisions, not creative ones. Launches are bought big because the kilo or 500 g "felt cheaper", although on CSI's listed prices 52 of 91 oils cost within 1% per gram at 1 kg and 100 g. Nothing leaves the range, so every launch adds a bottle and none removes one. And batches are not sized to bottles, so each production run leaves 20 or 30 g behind that is too little for the next batch and too much to waste.

The launch pipeline

The pipeline has three stages and one gate. It exists to make every new scent prove itself before it is allowed to tie up cash.

Stage 1, test. Buy the smallest listed bottle. A 15 g scents three 50 g test candles at 8% (4 g each, 12 g total) with 3 g spare. Burn-test for throw, soot and colour in your own wax. Most scents that fail, fail here, and they cost ₹99.00 to ₹199.00 to find out. Where the smallest listed size is 50 g or 100 g, the test bottle doubles as the launch bottle.

Stage 2, launch. Buy one 100 g bottle and pour one batch sized to use it: six 200 g candles at 16 g each, or the matching number in your own size. Sell those, and nothing more. The limited run is a feature, not a flaw: "limited batch" is honest and it gives you a clean sell-through number.

The gate, at four weeks. Look at sell-through. Did the batch sell out, and did anyone ask for it again? Decide one of three things: promote to the core range (500 g or 1 kg, a reorder point and a buffer, as My Candle Business Uses 20 Different Fragrance Oils — How Do I Set Separate Reorder Levels for Fast-Selling and Slow-Selling Scents? sets out), keep small on single 100 g bottles reordered only when empty, or retire. The four-week window and the thresholds are yours to set; the point is to set them before the launch, not after.

Twelve launches, two ways

Here is an example year: one new CSI oil launched each month, twelve in all. The outcomes are illustrative, not predictions: three become core sellers (300 g a month after launch), four are modest (80 g a month), and five flop (one small launch batch, then nothing). The first route buys 500 g of each new scent at launch and reorders 500 g when needed. The second runs the pipeline: smallest listed bottle to test, one 100 g to launch, then 500 g packs for core scents and 100 g bottles for modest ones. Both pour exactly the same candles.

The 500 g route pours the same candles and ends the year with ₹20,060.46 more oil on the shelf, most of it in the five flops, where it will never become a candle. The pipeline still leaves some oil behind, because testers and launch bottles are rarely used to the last gram, but it is spread thin across small bottles that the remnant rules below can clear. The core scents end the year with a working stock in either route, because once a scent is proven the pipeline buys 500 g at a time too; the difference is entirely in the scents that did not earn it.

Sizing batches to bottles

Most orphan bottles are made at the pouring table, not at the checkout. A batch sized to a round number of candles leaves an awkward remainder in the bottle. Do that every batch, for every scent, and the shelf fills with bottles too light to pour and too heavy to bin. The fix is to size batches to bottles: decide the batch from the grams in the bottle, not the other way round.

A 100 g bottle pours six 200 g candles with 4 g left, which is exactly one 50 g test candle. A 500 g pours thirty-one with 4 g left. If your candle is a different size, work out the same table for it and choose batch sizes that land near zero. Where a remainder is unavoidable, pour it immediately into something that does not need to repeat: a 50 g test pot, a wax melt cavity, a sampler.

Slots, gates and remnants

The pipeline controls how each scent is bought. Slots control how many scents there are. Without a slot limit, a business that launches monthly and retires nothing adds twelve scents a year, and even with perfect pipeline buying it ends up with dozens of small bottles to manage. With a slot limit, say twelve core and four keep-small, the range stays the same size however many scents you launch; only the names change.

Retiring is where most makers hesitate, because a retired scent still has fans. Two things help. First, seasonal returns: a retired scent can come back as a limited batch next season, bought as a single 100 g bottle again. Second, the remnant route: a retired scent's last 30 or 60 g is perfect for wax melts or a discovery-style sampler you build yourself, which clears the bottle and gives the fans one more chance. I Want to Discontinue a Slow-Selling Candle — How Do I Use the Remaining Fragrance Oil, Wax, Jars and Packaging Without Wasting Inventory? covers using up the rest of a retired candle's materials, and I Have 30 Candle Fragrances but Most Sales Come from 10 — How Should I Change My Fragrance Oil Purchasing Quantities Based on Actual Demand? covers resetting purchasing when most sales come from a third of the range.

Finally, keep the monthly count. Open bottles, orphans under 100 g, and value outside the top ten. If the pipeline and slots are working, the first two stay roughly flat however many scents you launch, and the third falls. If they do not, one of the three causes has crept back in, and the table at the top of this page tells you where to look. For the cash side of the same discipline, My Candle Business Is Growing but All My Cash Keeps Going Back into Wax, Fragrance Oils and Jars — How Much Raw-Material Inventory Should I Actually Hold? sets the whole-business inventory target and My Supplier Gives Better Prices for Larger Orders but I'm Worried About Dead Stock — How Do I Decide the Maximum Inventory Worth Holding? caps any single scent.

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