I Have ₹50,000 for Raw Materials — Should I Spend More on Wax and Jars or Use a Larger Portion of the Budget to Build a Wider Fragrance Collection?

The short answer: neither — the split barely moves

The question sets up a choice between two piles: wax and jars on one side, fragrance on the other. It sounds like moving money from one pile to the other buys either more candles or more variety. But every candle needs the same 16 g of oil and the same jar whatever the scent, so a balanced basket needs roughly the same grams of oil — and the same rupees — whether those grams arrive as three bottles or twelve. What changes with width is how deep each scent is, and how much you spend on testing.

The table proves it with real CSI packs. For each width it finds the deepest basket — equal candles per scent — that still leaves at least 15% of ₹50,000 as reserve, then shows where the money went.

Total candles move between 150 and 165 — the wobble comes from oil prices (the fourth oil, Dark Vanilla, is ₹7.90 a gram at 100 g) and from pack rounding, not from width. The oil share stays between 23% and 26% of the budget. What falls steeply is the depth: 55 candles a scent at three scents, 13 at twelve. And every extra scent takes two test candles out of the saleable count, so twelve scents sell 132 candles against three scents' 159.

Where the money really goes wrong: unbalanced baskets

The reader's instinct is right in one sense: you can waste ₹50,000 by tilting it. But the waste is not choosing wax-and-jars or fragrance — it is buying them for different candle counts. Here are the two common versions, priced with the same jars and wax as this page's plan (156 candles' worth).

The wide-and-shallow basket looks like a collection — twelve scents — but 100 g of oil fills only 6 candles at 16 g plus loss, so twelve bottles fill 72 jars and leave 84 jars and their wax on the shelf. The deep-and-narrow basket makes the opposite error. Neither problem is fixed by moving money between the two piles; both are fixed by buying every line for the same candle count. The five-fragrance capacity post shows how to check that line by line before you order.

The balanced plan: 6 fragrances, 26 candles each

This page's plan uses 6 fragrances, because at that width each scent still gets 26 candles — 24 of them for sale after its two test candles. That is a labelled example threshold of at least 20 saleable per scent, enough to put each fragrance in front of a real number of customers. Pick your own threshold and read your width from the table above. The example oils are the top of CSI's best-selling sort — Lavender (1), British Rose (2), Roasted Coffee (3), Dark Vanilla (4), Blue Ocean (5), Citrus Lemon (7). Position 6, Sandalwood, is skipped: on the 4 October re-check its 15 g, 50 g and 100 g are out of stock and only the 500 g and 1 kg are buyable.

By group: tools ₹1,239.00, testing ₹330.40, wax and jars ₹26,550.00 (53.1%), fragrance ₹12,623.36 (25.2%), production wicks and stickers ₹1,226.00, reserve ₹8,031.24 (16.1%). CSI 464 costs ₹507.40 a kilo at every bag size, so the wax line is bought to need and nothing is gained by a bigger bag; the White Matte jar is ₹70.80 in fives or tens.

The BOM and the finished-candle count

Per candle at a working 8%: 16 g of oil and 184 g of wax, in a White Matte jar whose fill CSI does not publish — 200 g is illustrative, so weigh a test pour. CSI 464's page states a fragrance ceiling of 10%, so 8% leaves two points of headroom. The stack: 2 test candles per scent counted as whole candles, 3% pour loss on wax and oil, glass breakage covered by the spares that rounding to packs of ten leaves, then rounding to real packs.

The oils bind at 156 — exactly what a balanced basket should look like, with every other line just above it: the jars, rounded to packs of ten, stop at 160 and leave 4 spares for breakage, and the wax would stretch to 158, a small cushion for a remelt. Rounding leaves 9.1 g of oil across all six bottles, less than one candle's worth, because each oil's need was matched to real 50 g and 100 g bottles. At 1 kg prices, CSI 464 and the jar together cost ₹164.16 per candle; oil averages ₹80.92 at this width.

The test stage for six scents

Two test candles per scent is the breadth tax this page keeps mentioning: twelve candles at six scents. They are worth it, because different oils can change how the same wick burns, and CSI publishes no wick-per-diameter chart and no throw data for any oil.

A wick passes when it is no worse than a candle you trust on every safety line and within the jar supplier's guidance and the candle fire-safety standard you work to. CSI publishes no numeric limits, and throw is never bought with a hotter jar. The wick-sample post covers what to add when both fail.

The priced shopping list

Related budget questions

The ₹10,000 hub sets the allocation rules. ₹30,000 online answers width as fragrance × size; ₹50,000 for five fragrances counts finished candles line by line; ₹1 lakh without dead stock stages the oils; and 5 deep or 15 shallow runs this page's question at ₹1 lakh with minimum test quantities. Lavender, vanilla, coffee, rose and oud is the shared-materials view of a five-scent collection.

Frequently asked questions