I Have ₹30,000 to Start Selling Candles Online — How Many Fragrances and Jar Sizes Can I Realistically Support Without Spreading Inventory Too Thin?

The answer as a grid: fragrances × jar sizes on ₹30,000

Selling online changes the arithmetic in one important way. In a market stall you can show three scents in one size and talk about the rest; online, every combination of scent and size is a separate listing with its own photograph, its own stock count and its own "out of stock" button. Four scents in two sizes is eight SKUs, each of which needs enough candles on hand to fill orders while you pour the next batch. So the real question is not "how many fragrances" but how many fragrance × size combinations ₹30,000 can stock to a sensible depth.

The grid below answers it with CSI's real packs. Each cell is a complete basket: tools, a two-wick test for every jar size, Premium Coconut Soy Wax CSI 468 for every candle, each fragrance's oil rounded to real bottles, the jars in their real packs, a production wick pack per size and stickers. Depth is 10 candles per SKU — a labelled example for a first online stock; replace it with your own. A cell fits if it leaves at least 15% of the budget (₹4,500.00) as a testing and reorder reserve.

Read it along each column. With one size, ₹30,000 supports up to 6 fragrances. With two sizes, up to 4. With three sizes, up to 3. The most SKUs that fit is not the most fragrances, because small containers are cheap: three fragrances in three sizes (₹20,839.78, 9 SKUs) fits more comfortably than four in two sizes (₹22,449.66, 8 SKUs). The grid is honest about one thing the price of a single candle hides — the jump from 3 to 4 fragrances here is larger than from 2 to 3, because the fourth example oil, Gilli Mitti, is ₹8.96 a gram. Your oils will move the cells; the shape will not.

At 12 per SKU instead of 10, the limits tighten to 5, 3 and 3 fragrances across the three columns. That is the trade an online seller actually makes: depth or breadth. The ₹50,000 depth-or-breadth post prices the same trade with more money, and the three-sizes-in-five-fragrances post shows the full 15-SKU BOM.

The plan this page recommends: 4 fragrances × 2 sizes

Four fragrances in a standard 200 g jar and an 85 g tin gives an online shop a real choice of scent and two price points without a third container to test and photograph. The four example oils sit in the first fifteen of CSI's best-selling sort — Japanese Cherry Blossom (position 8), Bergamot Amber (position 11), Woody Oud (position 12), Gilli Mitti (Patchouli) (position 15). That position is the order CSI's collection sorts in, not a forecast of what will sell for you; choose your own four and re-price the fragrance lines.

One bag type and one set of oils serve both sizes. That is the main reason two sizes cost so much less than twice one size: an oil bottle does not care which container it ends up in, so each fragrance's oil is pooled across the 200 g jar and the 85 g tin and rounded to bottles once. Only the containers, the test packs and the production wick are bought per size. Adding a fifth fragrance to this plan would cost ₹4,579.52 more; adding a third size (the 50 g velvet jar) ₹5,389.12 more — the grid's next cells.

The bill of materials, size by size

Per candle at a working 8%: the 200 g size is 16 g of oil and 184 g of wax; the 85 g tin is 6.8 g and 78.2 g. CSI's page for CSI 468 states a fragrance load of up to 13%, a melting point of 50–53°C and pour at 58–60°C, so 8% sits inside its ceiling with room to test higher. Each size gets 6 test candles: two wick types on two fragrances, and one confirmation candle for each of the other two.

The spare column is small on purpose: each oil was rounded to the tightest real combination of bottles, so the spare is 1.7 g to 18.2 g per scent — at most 1 more 200 g candle. Restocks therefore come from the reserve, one bottle at a time: a 100 g bottle of the scent that sells out restocks 6 more 200 g candles or 14 more tins. The jars are already partly there — 4 spare White Matte jars and 2 spare tins from pack rounding — and the reserve covers the rest. Watch which SKU sells out first and restock that one.

How many finished candles, and which line binds

The inventory makes 92 finished candles: 12 test candles and 80 for sale — 10 of each of the 8 SKUs. In each size the binding line is the container count you chose (the jars are bought to the candle count, then rounded up to packs); the wax and oil were bought to land just above it. That is the right way round for an online shop: the SKU depth is the decision, and every material is sized to it.

Those per-candle figures are the floor for your online price — before the box, the courier, the marketplace or payment fee and your time, none of which are CSI costs and none of which this page can price for you. The packaging-reserve post shows how much of a budget to hold back for exactly those costs.

Testing two sizes, not one

A second size is not just more jars. A different container diameter usually needs its own wick, and CSI publishes no wick-per-diameter chart, so each size gets its own wick test. That is why moving right in the grid costs more than the containers alone.

A wick passes when it is no worse than a candle you trust on every safety line and stays within the container supplier's guidance and the candle fire-safety standard you work to. CSI publishes no numeric flame-height or container-temperature limit, and a hotter jar is never traded for more throw. The 50 g, 200 g and 500 g procurement post covers testing across three sizes.

The shopping list for an online launch

Related budget questions

The ₹10,000 hub sets the allocation rules this page applies. Standardising on one jar and one wax and how much complexity a small wick range removes are the case for fewer SKUs; ten SKUs with the fewest materials standardises across a larger range; and the five-fragrance ₹50,000 post runs the capacity count when each oil binds separately.

Frequently asked questions