My Cheap Candle Jars Have a Higher Breakage Rate — How Do I Include Broken Jars in the True Cost of Every Sellable Candle?

The three stages of breakage

Most makers count breakage as ‘a few jars a box’ and move on. That undercounts it, because the cost of a breakage grows with every step the jar has passed through. A jar that arrives cracked costs you the jar. A jar that cracks when hot wax goes in costs you the jar and the wax, oil, wick, sticker and time that went into it. A jar that breaks in a courier's van costs you everything, plus the packaging and courier for the lost parcel, plus a whole new candle, packaging and courier to replace it. So the breakage rate at each stage needs its own line.

The packaging here is an example ₹8.00 label and ₹30.00 box plus a CSI tissue sheet at ₹6.50; the courier is an example ₹80.00. Replace both with your own figures. Notice the ratio: a transit breakage costs about 10 times a breakage at unpacking. One per cent lost in transit costs far more than one per cent lost in the box.

Cost per delivered candle

Chain the three stages together and you get the number that belongs on your cost sheet: what it costs to put one intact candle in a customer's hands. Each stage divides the running cost by the share that survives it.

With zero breakage the cheap jar would deliver a candle for ₹361.26, about ₹35.80 less than the dearer jar. The example breakage adds ₹17.29 to the cheap jar's delivered cost and ₹5.76 to the dearer one's, which still leaves the cheap jar ₹24.26 cheaper per delivered candle. Most of the cheap jar's extra cost comes from the transit stage, because by then the whole candle, packaging and courier are at stake.

The break-even jar price

Run the chain backwards. Given the cheap jar's delivered cost and the sturdier jar's breakage rates, what is the highest price the sturdier jar can have and still deliver candles at the same cost? With the example rates, ₹47.02. Any sturdier jar below that is cheaper per delivered candle, even though it costs more per piece.

The first row is worth reading closely: if the cheap jar breaks only slightly more than the sturdier one, the sturdier jar's break-even price sits much closer to ₹35.00 — the premium is hard to justify. The value of a sturdier jar comes almost entirely from transit breakage, because that is where each loss is most expensive. That also means a better packing method can sometimes do the same job as a dearer jar for less money.

Run it the other way for a ₹70.80 jar. If the cheap jar broke at the same rate at all three stages, and the sturdier jar held the example 0.5% / 0.5% / 1%, the ₹70.80 jar only becomes the cheaper candle once the ₹35.00 jar breaks at about 6.0% at every stage. Below that, breakage makes the cheap jar dearer than its invoice price, but not dearer than the alternative. That is an uncomfortable result for anyone selling sturdier jars, including us — and it is why you should put your own tallies into the formula before paying a premium for glass.

Transit: the expensive stage

Here is the cheap jar's delivered cost as transit breakage rises, holding the other two stages at the example 3% and 2%. The last column shows what each extra point of transit breakage adds to every delivered candle.

The broken-parcels column is the expected number of replacements you will send for 300 orders — each one a customer who received a broken candle. That has a cost the formula does not capture: some of those customers will not order again. If your transit breakage is above a point or two, fixing it is worth more than the rupees in the table suggest. The free-shipping post covers how courier cost is treated in the price.

How many jars to order

Breakage also changes how many jars you need to buy. To deliver 300 intact candles you must buy more than 300 jars, because some break at each stage. Jars to buy = orders ÷ [(1 − b1) × (1 − b2) × (1 − b3)].

Here is a CSI order for 50 delivered 200 g candles in White Matte jars, buying 55 jars to cover the example breakage rates. The oil is a 1 kg bottle of Japanese Cherry Blossom (₹4.84 a gram, slightly cheaper than the 100 g), which covers the 915 g needed with room to spare; the wax is a 10 kg pack of CSI 464.

Where this fits: the fill cost comes from the ten-line cost sheet, and a breakage allowance belongs in every price test — ₹499, ₹399, ₹799 and ₹1,499, where a broken luxury candle costs most. The same divide-by-what-survives logic handles wax rejects in the reject-rate post and every other production loss in the wastage and rejects post. The ₹150 candle post lists the other costs that sit alongside breakage.

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