I'm Starting with ₹50,000 but Want Enough Raw Materials to Reorder Only After Sales Begin — How Should I Plan My Opening Inventory?

What an opening inventory is for

Most budget advice splits the money by category — so much for wax, so much for oils — and stops. That tells you what to buy but not how much. The question in the title is sharper: you want the opening stock to last until sales begin to fund reorders, so you never have to put in more of your own money. That turns the opening inventory into a bridge with two ends: launch day at one end, and at the other, the day when stock is running low and the till holds enough to pay for more.

Two numbers set the length of that bridge: how fast you sell, which you do not yet know, and how much each sale contributes towards the next batch, which you can calculate. This page works through both with example figures, then shows the one situation where the plan breaks — selling faster than expected — and why a slice of the ₹50,000 should stay as cash. If your ₹50,000 is for a premium brand with heavier packaging, the ₹50,000 premium brand guide covers that split; this page is about lasting until the reorder.

₹50,000, line by line

The plan below uses 200 g candles at an 8% load (16 g of oil, 184 g of wax), Luxury Soy Wax Chunks, Eco Thin C1 wicks and White Matte Glass Jars, in five scents of 30 candles each. Wax is planned at 184 g plus a 5% allowance, which for 150 candles is 28.98 kg. Six 5 kg bags (₹17,970.00) cover it — and, on the listed prices, cost ₹18.00 less than two 10 kg bags and two 5 kg bags.

The materials for the 150 candles — oils, wax, jars and wicks — come to ₹42,329.20, or ₹282.19 a candle. That excludes labour, labels, packaging beyond tissue, courier and GST. The ₹3,712.96 kept back is not an accident of rounding; it is the part of the plan that stops a fast start from becoming a cash crisis, as the reorder section shows. If you prefer CSI 464 (rated up to 10%, against 13% for the Chunks), three 10 kg bags cost ₹15,222.00, and the ₹2,748.00 saved goes into the cash kept back.

How long it lasts

Before launch you do not know your sales pace, so test the plan against three. The paces below are examples, not forecasts. The reorder point is set at two weeks of stock at that pace — a working assumption covering delivery, pouring and cure. Delivery times are not published in our data; ask CSI on WhatsApp and adjust. The last two columns ask whether, when the reorder point arrives, sales have already paid for the next batch of ₹42,329.20.

At 10 or 20 a week, the plan works exactly as the title wants: by the time stock is low, sales have already paid for the reorder. The margin is thinner than it looks — the break-even pace is about 31 a week. At 40 a week it fails: the reorder point arrives in week 1.75, after 70 sales, but the next batch is not paid for until about 88. That gap is a good problem, but it is still a problem: without cash in hand you either run out of stock in the busiest weeks or put more of your own money in. The kept-back cash narrows it, and so does ordering a smaller second batch of only the fastest scents. Safety stock when sales grow unpredictably takes this further.

The reorder test: stock and cash

The contribution arithmetic is simple and worth doing on paper. The next batch in this plan costs ₹42,329.20 in materials. You hold ₹3,712.96 back. Each sale contributes an example ₹439.00. So about 88 sales pay for the batch: (₹42,329.20 − ₹3,712.96) ÷ ₹439.00, rounded up. Change any of those figures and the answer moves; that is why it belongs in your own spreadsheet. Whether ₹180 of materials on a ₹499 candle leaves enough margin and the costs beyond materials help you fill in the selling costs.

Five scents at 500 g

Thirty candles a scent at 16 g use 480 g, so a 500 g bottle is the right size — 20 g spare for a test pour. Five scents at 500 g hold 2.5 kg of oil, enough for 156 candles. Buy them only after the 15 g tests pass; if a scent fails, drop it and split its 30 candles between the others. One of the five, Chocolate Fudge, is a good reminder to check stock before planning: its 100 g was out of stock on the pull date, so its practical sizes were 15 g, 50 g, 500 g and 1 kg.

For three of the five, the 500 g is also genuinely cheaper per gram than the 100 g: Verbena (₹4.96/g against ₹5.90/g), Ylang Ylang Flower (₹5.43/g against ₹5.90/g) and Spicy Cinnamon (₹6.50/g against ₹6.99/g). Apple Cinnamon is flat. That is a bonus, not the reason: the reason is that 500 g matches 30 candles. The scent mix here — a herbal, a gourmand, a warm spice, a floral and a spiced fruit — is one example of five different families for a first range; bulk vs trial for ten fragrances covers how to shortlist.

If the budget will not stretch

If your own figures leave less room — a dearer jar, heavier packaging, or a price below ₹499.00 — there are three levers that shorten the bridge without breaking it. Fewer candles in the opening batch: 100 candles instead of 150 frees about a third of the materials spend, and the reorder simply comes sooner. Fewer scents: four scents at 500 g instead of five frees ₹2,371.80 if Apple Cinnamon is the one dropped. A cheaper wax: CSI 464 saves ₹2,748.00 on this batch, with a lower 10% ceiling.

What you should not do is cut the tests or the cash kept back. The tests are the cheapest insurance in the plan, and the cash is what lets a fast start turn into a second order rather than an empty shelf. For a month-by-month version of the same thinking with a smaller first order, see the lean three-month inventory; for the wax side alone, how much wax to hold before marketing; and for the sequence of purchases, the order-of-purchase guide. Once sales are steady, working capital for growth picks up where this page ends.

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