I Offer Free Shipping on a ₹599 Candle — How Should the Average Courier Cost Be Included When Deciding Whether the Product Is Profitable?
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What figure should I use for the courier? Your own, and this page will not supply one. CSI does not carry your parcels to your customers, does not set that rate and has no basis for guessing it. What the page does instead is carry it algebraically: express your figure as a share of the ₹599.00 price and every table below has a row for you.
How much does a bigger order help? Exactly one over the number of units. One parcel charge is 1.00× your figure on a single-candle order, 0.50× on two, 0.33× on three, 0.20× on five. Revenue rises in a straight line and the parcel charge does not rise at all, which is the whole argument for a free-shipping threshold rather than blanket free shipping.
Is CSI's own delivery charge the same thing? No, and conflating them is the common error. CSI's rates are inbound — what it costs to get raw materials to your workshop — and they are published flat rates by weight band. A 50-candle materials order on this build weighs 26.9 kg packed and the cheapest band covering it is ₹3,500.00 as at September 2026. That belongs inside your materials cost, not in your outbound line.
Two delivery costs, and only one of them is your supplier’s
Every candle business pays for two journeys. The first brings wax, oil, jars and wicks to your workshop; you pay it once per supplier order, it is a published rate you can look up before you buy, and it belongs inside your cost of materials. The second takes a finished candle to a customer; you pay it once per parcel, it is set by your courier and nobody else, and it belongs below contribution on the sheet. Almost every confused free-shipping calculation in Indian candle groups is one of these two wearing the other's clothes.
This page treats them accordingly. The inbound figures are real and quoted from CSI's published weight bands as at September 2026. The outbound figure is yours, appears as a blank row wherever a sheet needs it, and is never given a number here — not an average, not a typical, not a placeholder. Instead it is carried as a proportion, so that every table works whatever your courier charges. Where that proportion matters, express your own figure as a share of the ₹599.00 price and find your row.
| Inbound — CSI to your workshop | Outbound — you to your customer | |
|---|---|---|
| Who sets it | CSI, published flat rates by weight band | Your courier |
| How often you pay it | Once per supplier order | Once per parcel you send |
| Can it be known in advance? | Yes, from the packed weight of the order | Yes, from your own courier’s rate card |
| Where it belongs on the sheet | Inside cost of materials | Below contribution, as its own line |
| Figure used on this page | ₹2,400.00 for a 50-candle order, ₹48.00 a candle | your figure — not a CSI cost |
| Does it fall with order size? | Yes, but in bands, and not always | Per candle yes, per parcel never |
The inbound side, done on packed weight rather than product weight
CSI charges by the weight of the parcel, and a parcel weighs more than what is inside it. A 1 kg pack of Eco Soy CSI 400 stores a packed weight of 1.5 kg; a 1 kg bottle of Blue Ocean Fragrance Oil the same. Build a freight estimate on the label weight and you will land a band or two below what you actually pay. So work it in packed kilograms from the start.
Take a run of 50 candles on this build. You need 7,500 g of wax, 600 g of oil, 50 vessels and 50 wicks. In CSI pack sizes that is a 5 kg and three 1 kg packs of Eco Soy CSI 400, a 500 gm and two 50 gm bottles of Blue Ocean Fragrance Oil, 5 packs of ten Clear Glass Jar with Golden Lid and one 50-wick pack of Eco Candle Wicks Thin (C1) — ₹11,180.00 of goods weighing 26.9 kg packed. Glass is 15.0 kg of that, which is the single most useful thing to know about candle freight in India.
| Item | Packs | Goods | Packed weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eco Soy CSI 400 | 1 × 5 kg + 3 × 1 kg | ₹3,193.00 | 10.5 kg |
| Blue Ocean Fragrance Oil | 1 × 500 gm + 2 × 50 gm | ₹2,972.00 | 1.2 kg |
| Clear Glass Jar with Golden Lid | 5 × Pack of 10 | ₹4,720.00 | 15.0 kg |
| Eco Candle Wicks Thin (C1) | 1 × 50 Wicks | ₹295.00 | 0.2 kg |
| Total | — | ₹11,180.00 | 26.9 kg |
Now the part that surprises people. At 26.9 kg the only published band covering the consignment is the Under 35 kg Expedited Shipping at ₹3,500.00 — Standard stops at 15 kg and Fast Track at 25 kg, so nothing cheaper reaches it. Send the 5 jar packs as one consignment of 15.0 kg and everything else as another of 11.9 kg, and each falls inside the Under 15kg Standard Shipping band at ₹1,200.00. Two consignments come to ₹2,400.00 against ₹3,500.00 for one, a difference of ₹1,100.00, or ₹22.00 a candle across 50.
| Arrangement | Weight | Band used | Charged | Per candle |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Everything together | 26.9 kg | Under 35 kg Expedited Shipping | ₹3,500.00 | ₹70.00 |
| Glass on its own | 15.0 kg | Under 15kg Standard Shipping | ₹1,200.00 | ₹24.00 |
| Everything else | 11.9 kg | Under 15kg Standard Shipping | ₹1,200.00 | ₹24.00 |
| Two consignments | 26.9 kg | two Standard bands | ₹2,400.00 | ₹48.00 |
| Difference | — | — | ₹1,100.00 | ₹22.00 |
Fold whichever figure you actually pay into your materials cost. On the two-consignment arrangement that is ₹48.00 a candle, taking materials from ₹219.62 to ₹267.62 and contribution on a ₹599.00 sale from ₹379.38 to ₹331.38, or 55.32%. That is the honest starting point for the outbound question, and it is already ₹48.00 lower than the figure most cost sheets begin from.
Free shipping is a price decision, not a delivery decision
When you advertise free shipping you have not made delivery cheaper. You have agreed to pay for it out of the ₹599.00 instead of adding it on top, which makes it a discount equal to your courier figure. Writing it that way on the sheet is the whole trick, because a discount is something a business already knows how to think about: it has a size, it has a purpose, and it should be earning something in return — a higher conversion rate, a larger basket, fewer abandoned carts.
The mistake to avoid is averaging it into the unit cost. "Roughly forty rupees a candle" feels tidy and hides the two things that actually matter: that the charge is per parcel rather than per candle, and that it therefore behaves completely differently on a one-unit order than on a three-unit one. Put it on the order, not the unit, and the rest of this page falls out of it.
| Line | One candle | Two candles | Three candles | Whose number |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | ₹599.00 | ₹1,198.00 | ₹1,797.00 | Your ₹599.00 price |
| Materials | − ₹219.62 | − ₹439.24 | − ₹658.87 | CSI, September 2026 |
| Inbound freight | − ₹48.00 | − ₹96.00 | − ₹144.00 | CSI bands, per candle |
| = Before your own costs | ₹331.38 | ₹662.76 | ₹994.13 | The subtraction |
| Outbound courier — one per parcel | your figure | your figure | your figure | Not a CSI cost |
| Packaging — per candle | your figure | your figure | your figure | Not a CSI cost |
| Payment and marketplace fees | your figure | your figure | your figure | Not a CSI cost |
| Advertising — per order | your figure | your figure | your figure | Not a CSI cost |
| Absorbed courier per candle | 1.00× your figure | 0.50× your figure | 0.33× your figure | Derived |
The dilution table: one parcel across one, two and three candles
Your outbound figure does not change when a second candle goes into the same box. Revenue does. So the share of revenue the charge consumes falls as one over the number of units, and it falls fast: half at two candles, a third at three, a fifth at five. The first table puts that in your own units, as a multiplier on whatever your courier bills.
| Candles in the order | Order value | Materials | Absorbed per candle | Cost of every ₹10.00 absorbed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ₹599.00 | ₹219.62 | 1.00× your figure | 1.67% of the order |
| 2 | ₹1,198.00 | ₹439.24 | 0.50× your figure | 0.83% of the order |
| 3 | ₹1,797.00 | ₹658.87 | 0.33× your figure | 0.56% of the order |
| 4 | ₹2,396.00 | ₹878.49 | 0.25× your figure | 0.42% of the order |
| 5 | ₹2,995.00 | ₹1,098.11 | 0.20× your figure | 0.33% of the order |
Read the last column once more, because it is the one that changes decisions. Every ₹10.00 you absorb on a one-candle order costs you 1.67% of that order. The same ₹10.00 on a three-candle order costs 0.56%, and on a five-candle order 0.33%. Nothing about your courier improved. You simply put more revenue behind the same charge, which is the only lever in this whole subject that you control completely.
The second table takes it further, and it is the one to keep. Work out your own courier figure as a share of the ₹599.00 price — divide the rupees by 599 — and find the nearest row. The cells give what is left of the sale after materials and after absorption, as a share of revenue, at each basket size. Materials are 36.66% of a ₹599.00 candle on this build, so every cell starts from 63.34% and loses the absorbed share from there.
| Your outbound figure | 1 candle | 2 candles | 3 candles | 4 candles | 5 candles |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4% of the price | 59.34% | 61.34% | 62.00% | 62.34% | 62.54% |
| 8% of the price | 55.34% | 59.34% | 60.67% | 61.34% | 61.74% |
| 12% of the price | 51.34% | 57.34% | 59.34% | 60.34% | 60.94% |
| 16% of the price | 47.34% | 55.34% | 58.00% | 59.34% | 60.14% |
| 20% of the price | 43.34% | 53.34% | 56.67% | 58.34% | 59.34% |
The shape of that grid is the argument. A courier figure worth a fifth of the candle price takes 20.00 points off a single-candle order and only 4.00 points off a five-candle one. The same business, the same candle, the same promise — and a difference of 16.00 percentage points of margin that depends entirely on how many candles went in the box.
The order size at which absorbing it stops hurting
"Stops hurting" needs a definition before it can be calculated, and the honest one is this: the share of revenue you are prepared to surrender to delivery. Call it your tolerance. If you will give up two per cent of revenue, then an order has to be worth at least fifty times your courier figure before absorption fits inside it. Three per cent needs thirty-three times, five per cent twenty times, eight per cent twelve and a half times. That is the whole rule: order value ≥ your courier figure ÷ your tolerance.
Turned into candles at ₹599.00 each it becomes a threshold you can actually publish. Express your courier figure as a share of the price again, pick your tolerance, and the table gives the smallest number of candles that satisfies it, rounded up because you cannot ship two thirds of a candle.
| Your outbound figure | Tolerance 2% of revenue | Tolerance 3% of revenue | Tolerance 5% of revenue | Tolerance 8% of revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4% of the price | 2 → ₹1,198.00 | 2 → ₹1,198.00 | 1 → ₹599.00 | 1 → ₹599.00 |
| 8% of the price | 4 → ₹2,396.00 | 3 → ₹1,797.00 | 2 → ₹1,198.00 | 1 → ₹599.00 |
| 12% of the price | 6 → ₹3,594.00 | 4 → ₹2,396.00 | 3 → ₹1,797.00 | 2 → ₹1,198.00 |
| 16% of the price | 8 → ₹4,792.00 | 6 → ₹3,594.00 | 4 → ₹2,396.00 | 2 → ₹1,198.00 |
| 20% of the price | 10 → ₹5,990.00 | 7 → ₹4,193.00 | 4 → ₹2,396.00 | 3 → ₹1,797.00 |
Two practical consequences fall out of that grid and both are worth acting on. The first is that a threshold is nearly always better than a blanket promise: free shipping above the order value your own row gives you costs a known share of revenue, while free shipping on everything costs whatever your single-unit orders happen to be. The second is that the threshold has to be reachable. If your row says five candles and your typical customer buys one, the threshold is not a policy, it is a wall — and the honest fix is either a smaller second product that gets a basket over the line, or absorbing less and saying so plainly at checkout.
It is also worth pricing the alternative before you settle. Adding your courier figure to the price instead of absorbing it restores every rupee of contribution and costs you whatever conversion a visible delivery charge loses. This page cannot tell you what that is — it is your traffic, your category and your customers, and nobody at CSI has seen your checkout. What it can tell you is the exact size of what you are trading away, which is the row you just read.
Putting your own courier figure in, step by step
Done in that order the whole question becomes arithmetic. Materials on this candle are ₹219.62, inbound freight adds ₹48.00, and a ₹599.00 sale leaves ₹331.38 before anything of yours. Your outbound figure comes out of that once per parcel, diluted by one over the number of candles in the box, and your threshold is your figure divided by your tolerance. Nothing in that sentence needed an average, a typical or a guess.
What CSI does and does not do about delivery
CSI charges inbound delivery as published flat rates by total cart weight, in three named services — Fast Track Delivery, Expedited Shipping and Standard Shipping. There is no free-shipping threshold anywhere on the store, no free-shipping code, and nothing above 50 kg carries a published rate. The shipping policy states that for all orders, shipping amount to be PAID SEPARATELY ONCE THE ORDER IS PACKED AND WEIGHED, and that you should allow 1-2 business days for order processing. Everything else about timing, couriers or particular cities is not published, and this page will not fill the gap with an estimate.
Two of the reviews on this page say the delivery charges are high, and one says they restrict how much that customer buys. That is a fair thing to have said and it is worth answering with arithmetic rather than reassurance. On the 50-candle order costed above, the goods are ₹11,180.00 and the two-consignment charge is ₹2,400.00 — 21.47% of the order value, or ₹48.00 a candle against ₹219.62 of materials. Glass is what drives it: 15.0 kg of the 26.9 kg total. A maker who sources vessels locally and buys only wax, oil and wicks from CSI would be shipping 11.9 kg and paying ₹1,200.00. That is a real option and this page would rather say so than pretend otherwise.
The published spend discounts are also worth knowing for what they are. HAPPY5 gives 5% over ₹5,000, BIZWIZ8 8% over ₹12,000 and YAY10 10% over ₹20,000. They are order-value discounts on goods, not quantity breaks on rates and not delivery concessions — CSI publishes no per-kilogram quantity ladder, and on Eco Soy CSI 400 the 5 kg pack works out at ₹399.20 a kilogram against ₹399.00 at 1 kg, so the larger pack is fractionally dearer per kilogram rather than cheaper. The saving from ordering deeper is a freight saving, not a rate saving, and on this order it was ₹1,100.00 from how the consignment was arranged.
For a festive run the timing matters as much as the money. Diwali 2026 is 8 November 2026, and soy candles want 14 to 21 days of cure before they are burned or sold, so a festive batch wants pouring by about mid-October — which means the materials order, and whatever band it falls in, has to be settled well before that. If you want the packed weight of an order worked out before you commit, ask on WhatsApp.
CANDLEMAKINGSUPPLIESINDIA sells wax, fragrance oil, vessels and wicks, and this page still tells you that on the 50-candle order costed here the glass is 15.0 kg of a 26.9 kg consignment and is what drives the freight — and that a maker who sources vessels locally and buys only wax, oil and wicks from CSI would be shipping 11.9 kg. It also says plainly that arranging the same goods as two consignments rather than one was worth ₹1,100.00, that the result is an accident of this particular weight and should not be generalised, and that CSI publishes no free-shipping threshold of any kind. Two of the reviews on this page say the delivery charges are high; the arithmetic above is offered instead of an argument.
Every CSI price here is live stock in September 2026, taxes included, and the linked product pages are authoritative if anything changes. Shipping figures are CSI's published flat rates by total cart weight as read from the store in September 2026, quoted against the stored packed weights of the actual variants rather than the sizes on the labels; they are merchant-set and can change. Standard stops at 15 kg, Fast Track at 25 kg, and no rate is published above 50 kg. Your ₹599.00 selling price is yours and is used exactly as given. Your outbound courier charge is yours, is never given a figure anywhere on this page, and is carried instead as a share of the price so that every table works whatever you pay; the percentage axes in those tables are rows for you to locate yourself on, not estimates. Fragrance load is a percentage of wax weight, as CSI product pages state it: 150 g of wax at 8% carries 12 g of oil and 162 g goes into the vessel. Eco Soy CSI 400 publishes no fragrance-load maximum, so the Blue Ocean Fragrance Oil page's stated range of up to 10% for soy, paraffin and natural wax blends is the only published limit that applies to this pairing. No fill capacity is published for the Clear Glass Jar with Golden Lid, so none is stated here and no claim is made that this candle fits it. Packaging, outbound courier, payment and marketplace fees, advertising, labour, electricity and rent are not CSI products and carry no figure anywhere.
Message WhatsApp +91 7397976926 for bulk pricing, the packed weight of an order before you check out, GST invoicing, or MSDS and IFRA documentation.
Frequently asked questions
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Customer reviews: The six reviews at the top of this page are genuine, published Judge.me reviews left by CSI customers on their product pages. Names, star ratings, dates and products are as recorded by Judge.me. Two longer reviews are shortened with an ellipsis; wording is otherwise unedited. Two are below five stars and three are not recorded as a verified purchase — shown as recorded. Not recorded by Judge.me as a verified purchase, so shown without a verified-buyer badge: Mahak agarwal, Kavitha murthy, Jinal. No location is shown against any review because Judge.me does not store one.
Figures verified September 2026 (CSI live pricing). The reader's figures, used exactly as given and never presented as CSI prices: a ₹599.00 selling price and a free-shipping offer. The reader's outbound courier charge carries no figure anywhere on this page and is represented only as a share of that price; the percentage axes in the dilution, share-of-revenue and minimum-basket tables are rows for the reader to locate themselves on, not estimates of what delivery costs. Series convention: fragrance load is a percentage of wax weight, so the costing unit is 150 g of wax plus 12 g of oil at 8%, 162 g poured; that is the reading carried throughout. Live CSI prices, September 2026, taxes included. Wax: Eco Soy CSI 400 1 kg ₹399.00 (₹399.00/kg, packed 1.5 kg), 5 kg ₹1,996.00 (₹399.20/kg, packed 6.0 kg); the page publishes no fragrance-load maximum. Fragrance: Blue Ocean Fragrance Oil 50 gm ₹247.00, 100 gm ₹495.00 (₹4.95/g), 500 gm ₹2,478.00 (₹4.96/g, packed 0.8 kg), 1 kg ₹4,956.00 (₹4.96/g); the page states use up to 10% for soy, paraffin and natural wax blends, a flash point of 143°C and 0% vanillin. Vessel: Clear Glass Jar with Golden Lid Pack of 10 ₹944.00 (₹94.40 a piece, packed 3.0 kg); no fill capacity is published for it, so none is stated here. Wick: Eco Candle Wicks Thin (C1) 50 Wicks ₹295.00 and 500 Wicks ₹2,950.00, both ₹5.90 a wick; Thick (C2) ₹9.44 each. Shipping: CSI's published flat rates by total cart weight, read from the store in September 2026 — the 50-candle order weighs 26.9 kg packed and is covered only by the Under 35 kg Expedited Shipping band at ₹3,500.00, while 15.0 kg and 11.9 kg each fall in the Under 15kg Standard Shipping band at ₹1,200.00. Published order-value discount codes quoted: HAPPY5 5% over ₹5,000, BIZWIZ8 8% over ₹12,000, YAY10 10% over ₹20,000. There is no free-shipping threshold on the store. Diwali 2026 is 8 November 2026. The page assumes no wax wastage and that every candle in the 50-candle run is saleable, both assumptions rather than measurements. Packaging, outbound courier, payment and marketplace fees, advertising, labour, electricity and rent are not CSI products. Prices and availability change — the linked product pages are always authoritative.