20 Fragrance Oil Combo for Candle Making

Twenty oils, four per family

First, the plain fact: CSI does not sell a twenty-oil fragrance combo. No pre-packed twenty exists on the store. You choose twenty single oils from the Fragrance Oils collection and order them together. The advantage is that you choose the structure and the size, and as this page shows, the size is where most of the money goes.

The twenty below are four per scent family, chosen for two practical reasons. First, every one is in stock at 15 g, 50 g and 100 g on the pull date, so the three price points compare like with like. Second, all twenty sit in the lower and middle price bands of the catalogue, between ₹3.42 and ₹6.02 a gram at 100 g, so a range built from them can be priced as one line. Premium and inspired-by oils are left out deliberately; Professional Candle Fragrance Oil Collection for Small Businesses adds them as a separate tier.

The three price points

Here is the same twenty at each size, with what each version gets you. The 15 g set is a testing set. The 50 g set is a small selling range. The 100 g set is a production range for someone already selling.

Going from 15 g to 50 g multiplies the bill by 2.54 and the oil by 3.33. Going from 50 g to 100 g multiplies the bill by 1.85 and the oil by 2. So the per-gram price falls 23.8% at the first step and 7.4% at the second. That pattern holds across the catalogue: 15 g carries a median 23.1% per-gram premium over 100 g, while 50 g and 100 g are within 1% for 52 of 86 oils. For these twenty, the 50 g to 100 g step is bigger than usual because several of them, such as British Rose, Orchard Pear and Fresh Strawberries, have genuine price steps at 100 g.

Where the 15 g premium hides

Every oil's 15 g costs more per gram than its 100 g, but by very different amounts. Across these twenty, the premium ranges from about 10% to 100%. For an oil with a small premium, the 15 g is a cheap way to test. For an oil with a large one, the 50 g is often only a little over twice the 15 g price for more than three times the oil.

Fresh Strawberries is the extreme: its 15 g is ₹7.55 a gram, exactly double its 100 g at ₹3.78. Its 50 g costs ₹212.40, only 1.88 times the 15 g price, for 3.33 times the oil. Orchard Pear, British Rose and Cucumber Green Tea behave the same way. At the other end, Spicy Raspberry's 15 g premium is about 10% and Palo Santo's about 18%, so the 15 g is an efficient test for those.

The mixed test set

That gives a simple rule for a test set: buy the 50 g wherever it costs no more than about 2.3 times the 15 g. You pay a little over twice as much for 3.33 times the oil, and you can pour three real candles instead of one. For everything else, buy the 15 g. Applied to the twenty, the rule picks 50 g for 6 oils and 15 g for 14.

The mixed set costs ₹680.29 more than the all-15 g set and holds 510 g against 300 g. Its average price per gram is ₹5.16, against ₹6.50 for the all-15 g set. Put simply, the extra ₹680.29 buys 210 g of oil at about ₹3.24 a gram, cheaper than any of the twenty cost at 100 g. It also means six scents get a proper three-candle test instead of one candle.

Staged: test twenty, back five

Most makers who test twenty end up keeping a handful. A staged plan budgets for that. Buy all twenty at 15 g (₹1,949.22) or as the mixed set (₹2,629.51), test for a few weeks, then back your five winners at 100 g. Depending on which five win, the second order costs between ₹1,806.62 (the five cheapest 100 g bottles in the twenty) and ₹2,793.48 (the five dearest).

The staged plan usually costs less than buying all twenty at 50 g, and it ends with 500 g of oil in the five scents that actually sell, instead of 50 g in each of twenty. That is the real case against a fixed twenty-oil combo: it cannot be staged. Candle Fragrance Oil Combo Pack in India makes that argument for a six-oil combo, and I Want to Test 20 Candle Fragrances Before Launching My Brand — What Sample Sizes Should I Order? covers what sample sizes to order when testing twenty before a launch.

Per candle at each price point

Whatever size you buy, the oil ends up in a candle. Here is what the price point does to a 200 g candle's material cost, using 184 g of Luxury Soy Wax Chunks (₹110.22), an Eco Thin C1 wick (₹5.90) and a White Matte Glass Jar (₹70.80), a base of ₹186.92. Material cost excludes labour, packaging, freight and GST.

At 100 g, the average oil cost per candle is ₹73.36 and the whole twenty sit within a band narrow enough to price as one line. At 15 g, the average is ₹103.96, and if you sold candles poured from 15 g bottles at the same price as the rest, the margin would quietly shrink by ₹30.60 a candle. Test at 15 g; never produce from it.

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