I Want to Launch Five Candle Fragrances with ₹20,000 — How Much Fragrance Oil Should I Buy of Each Scent Without Locking Too Much Money into Slow Sellers?

Four ways to buy five scents

Wax, wicks and jars are shared. If one scent sells slowly, the wax and jars you bought for it simply go into the scent that is selling. Fragrance oil cannot move. A slow scent's oil is only ever that scent's candles. So when you launch five scents, the question is not only how much oil you need; it is how much money you are willing to have stuck if you guess wrong. There are four common ways to buy, and the table prices each one for the same five oils.

The worst case is calculated the hard way: it assumes the two scents you spent the most on are the two that sell slowly. The deep strategy is also impossible on this budget in practice. Five 500 g packs make 156 candles, which would need about 29 kg of wax and 156 jars, far more than ₹20,000 can buy after the oil. The thin strategy looks safest, but three candles per scent is not a test of demand. One customer can buy all three. The even strategy is the smallest purchase that produces a readable result.

Does buying more of a scent save money?

The usual reason to buy deep is price: a bigger pack should be cheaper per gram. On CSI's listed prices that is less true than most makers assume. Across the catalogue, 52 of 91 oils that list both 100 g and 1 kg cost within 1% per gram at both sizes, and only 24 save 5% or more. The five scents in this launch show the full range, from a real 22% saving to none at all.

Read across each row. Honeydew Melon is the clear case for buying bigger: ₹4.35 a gram at 100 g against ₹3.40 at 500 g, 22.0% cheaper. Lemongrass and Lime (11.9%) and Fallen Leaves (10.0%) also save at 500 g. Vanilla Bean saves only 2.8%. Pumpkin Spice is exactly ₹5.90 a gram at 100 g and 500 g; only its 1 kg drops, to ₹5.31. Notice too that the 50 g is dearer per gram than the 100 g for Pumpkin Spice, Lemongrass and Lime and Vanilla Bean, which is why this plan buys two 100 g bottles rather than four 50 g.

The ₹20,000 plan

Here is the whole launch on the even strategy. It assumes you already own the buy-once tools (a scale, thermometer, jug, stirring sticks and wick centering devices, ₹1,475.00 at CSI's prices; the ₹10,000 plan lists them). If you do not, take ₹1,475.00 out of the reserve and it drops to ₹406.82 — at which point the honest move is to launch four scents, not five.

Fragrance, testers included, is 31.5% of the budget. Wax and jars together are 56.0%, because every one of the 60 candles needs 184 g of wax and a jar regardless of scent. Each 200 g of oil leaves 8 g after twelve candles, about 4%, which covers pour loss within the 3–5% working assumption used across this series. Wax is CSI 464, ₹507.40 a kilo at every pack size and rated up to 10% fragrance by the wax maker; the 8% load used here sits inside that formulation ceiling.

The five candles span ₹239.73 to ₹296.46 in materials, a gap of ₹56.73. If you sell all five at one price, Vanilla Bean earns the least per candle. That is fine for a launch, but it is one more reason not to buy extra Vanilla Bean before it proves itself. Material cost excludes labour, packaging, freight and GST. Checking the margin on a ₹499 candle takes this further.

Betting on two

Launching in late September, it is tempting to buy more of the autumn and festive scents. Fallen Leaves and Pumpkin Spice fit Diwali gifting, and that reasoning is sound as far as it goes. But it is reasoning, not data; we have no sales figures that say which scent will lead for you. The table shows what the bet costs. It gives the two festive scents 300 g each and the other three 150 g.

If the bet is right, you have 18 candles of each festive scent and no reorder delay in the busiest fortnight. If it is wrong, ₹3,186.00 is stuck in two scents, against ₹2,760.00 on the even plan, and the other three scents run out at nine candles. The even plan with a reserve handles both cases: if the festive scents lead, the reserve buys their reorder within days. How early to stock up before Diwali covers the seasonal timing in detail.

Spending the reserve

The ₹1,881.82 reserve is the part of the plan that actually backs a winner. Decide in advance how you will spend it, so that the first week of sales does not make the decision for you.

Once the leaders are clear, the purchasing changes from even to weighted, and eventually to kilos for the one or two scents that carry the range. Which materials to buy in bulk and which in trial sizes, the ₹1 lakh tranche method and adjusting quantities once most sales come from a few scents each take one step further along that path. If your budget is larger, the ₹50,000 premium split and the order to buy everything in show where the extra money should go.

Frequently asked questions