My Candle Sales Are Growing 20% Every Month — How Should I Increase Raw-Material Purchases Without Building Excessive Inventory?

What 20% a month actually does to your raw materials

Growth of 20% a month compounds: 200 candles in September becomes 240 in October, 288 in November, 345.6 in December and 414.7 in January — more than double in four months. That creates two opposite risks. Order to last month's sales and you run short every month, because every month is bigger than the one before. Order far ahead "because we are growing" and the first flat month — a quiet week after Diwali, a marketplace listing that drops, a supplier delay on your packaging — leaves you holding materials you paid for at the peak of your optimism.

The fix is not a clever formula; it is a rhythm. Order one month at a time, sized to next month's forecast (which already includes the growth), plus a cover that scales with that forecast, minus what is already on the shelf. Then re-forecast from real sales before the next order. If growth continues, each order is bigger. If it stalls, the next order shrinks, and the most you can be over-stocked is roughly one month's forecast error plus the cover. The two posts before this one — units sold → monthly requirement and per-SKU forecasting — give you the forecast; this page is about how far ahead to buy against it.

The BOM and the allowances, once

The example candle is a 110 g fill in the Yankee Glass Jar 130 ml with clear cap — the 110 g is the reader's weighed fill; CSI does not publish this jar's fill weight. At 8% of finished weight the candle holds 8.8 g of oil and 101.2 g of wax. The wax is Premium Coconut Soy Wax CSI 468, whose product page states a melting point of 50–53°C, pour at 58–60°C and a fragrance load of up to 13%, so 8% sits well inside its ceiling. The wick is Eco Candle Wicks Thin C1, the reader's burn-tested choice for this jar. The range is two fragrances split 60/40: Orchard Pear and Cucumber Green Tea.

Allowances are applied the same way every month: 2 QC candles per fragrance, an example 3% reject rate (divide by 0.97), 4% pour loss on wax and oil, 2% breakage on the glass. The cover is a labelled example: 25% of next month's need — about a week of production — held as raw material. Which materials deserve safety stock and how much for a shared wax versus a slow oil decide that figure properly; here it is one number so the growth arithmetic stays visible.

Each row is next month's need plus a growing cover, minus whatever the last order left. The packs change tier as the volume grows: October needs 3 × 10 kg + 1 × 5 kg; by January it is 4 × 10 kg + 1 × 5 kg + 3 × 1 kg. CSI 468 is ₹650.00 a kilo at 1 kg and ₹637.00 at 5 kg and 10 kg, so the step up to 5 kg bags is the only price step; beyond that, larger orders change how many bags you open, not the rate. Container soy bags stop at 10 kg in CSI's listing — there is no 25 kg carton — and quantities above the listed packs are quoted on WhatsApp with no published discount.

The stall test: what happens if growth stops

Compare two ways of buying for October to December. Policy A buys three months now: materials for 916 candles, 96 kg of CSI 468. Policy B is the rolling order above. Now suppose sales stay at 240 in November and December instead of growing. Policy A finishes December holding materials for 157 candles it did not need — about 16.6 kg of wax plus the matching oil, jars and wicks, roughly ₹23,442.20 of materials at this order's rates. Policy B's November order was still placed on the growth forecast, so it ends November about 8.1 kg of wax above its cover — and December's order simply shrinks to absorb it.

Policy A is not always wrong. If your packaging supplier needs long lead times, if a festive season will close your workshop for a week, or if a material is hard to get, buying ahead can be the right call — but make it a decision about that material, not a side effect of growth. CSI publishes no lead times, so use the ones your own orders have shown you; separate reorder points per material sets them up, and 13 kg needed, 10 kg packs covers what to do with a remainder you carry on purpose.

October's order, priced

October's forecast is 240 candles — 144 Orchard Pear and 96 Cucumber Green Tea — poured as 151 and 102 after QC and rejects. Each material is ordered as October's need plus 25% of November's, rounded to the cheapest in-stock CSI packs. The jars are sold singly at ₹47.20; the Thin C1 10-pack was out of stock on the 4 October 2026 re-check, so wicks come in 20s and up.

At October's rates the material cost per candle is ₹150.55 for Orchard Pear and ₹147.45 for Cucumber Green Tea — wax at ₹0.64/g, oil at the per-gram rate of the packs bought, the ₹5.90 wick and the ₹47.20 jar with its cap; stickers, labels, labour, freight and GST excluded. Cucumber Green Tea is one of the oils that steps down per gram at 500 g (₹3.53/g at 100 g, ₹3.33/g at 500 g and 1 kg); Orchard Pear steps from ₹3.80/g at 100 g to ₹3.74/g at 500 g. As the volume grows, both oils move into 500 g and 1 kg bottles naturally — buy the size the month uses, not the size you expect to need in March.

Buy now, buy after testing

Growth tends to make makers look at unit costs. One here is the jar: at ₹47.20, the Yankee jar is the most expensive line in the candle after the wax. CSI's 200 ml Salsa jar with golden lug cap is ₹29.50 a jar in 50s and 100s. But it is a bigger jar, so it is a new product with a new fill, and possibly a new wick — not a cheaper version of the same candle. CSI does not publish its fill weight or diameter, and publishes no wick sizing, so it enters October only as a trial.

The CSI products in this growth order

The monthly growth routine

The full pipeline from formula to order is on the cluster hub. When the range grows past a few SKUs, combining 20 BOMs into one wax total and one consolidated monthly order keep the order manageable.

Frequently asked questions