Should I Include Discounted Stock and Customer Complaints When Calculating the True Cost of Poor Candle Adhesion?

The straight answer: yes — both, once each, at their real value

Discounted stock and customer complaints are real costs of poor adhesion, and a true-cost figure that leaves them out will tell you the problem is smaller than it is. But each has a specific value, and the commonest error is to add it at the wrong one. A discounted candle costs you the margin you gave away, not the cost of making it — you already paid that, and you would have paid it for a perfect candle too. A replacement costs you a second candle, the courier and the time, but not the original sale, because you kept that money. A refund costs you the money you returned and the time, but not the making cost of the candle, which is already in your month's spend.

This page works it through for a labelled example online month: 800 candles in the Yankee Glass Jar 130 ml (an example fill of 110 g — CSI does not publish this jar's fill weight, so weigh your own), poured in Premium Coconut Soy Wax CSI 468 at 8% Vanilla Bean. Of those, an example 12% — 96 candles — are sold as seconds because of wet spots, and an example 3% of the full-price candles come back as complaints about how the candle looked on arrival. Every one of those figures is yours to replace.

On those examples the true cost of a candle that sells at full price and stays sold is ₹283.82, against ₹208.85 in the factory view that ignores both. The month's true extra cost is ₹26,768.24. Count the same events twice and you would report ₹56,275.56 — ₹29,507.32 too much. And complaints point to the cheapest test: wet spots that customers see but your packer did not are commonly linked to temperature cycling after the candle leaves you, so before you think about wax, find out how many of your dispatch-passing jars fail after a cycle.

Discounted stock: the margin given up, not the candle

In the example, the candle costs ₹208.85 to make — ₹64.46 of CSI 468 at ₹637.00/kg (the 5 kg bag), ₹67.28 of Vanilla Bean at the 1 kg rate, the ₹47.20 jar, an example wick line ₹5.90, example labour ₹18.00 and an example front label ₹6.00. It sells for an example ₹599.00. A second at 30% off sells for ₹419.30. The cost of that wet spot is the ₹179.70 you did not receive. The ₹208.85 would have been spent whether the jar looked perfect or not, so it is not a cost of the wet spot.

Across the example month that is 96 × ₹179.70 = ₹17,251.20. Two refinements belong in the ledger if they apply. If seconds sell more slowly and sit in stock, the cash tied up is a holding cost — use your own labelled rate, not an invented one. If some seconds never sell and are remelted or binned, move them to the rework or scrap line in the cosmetic-reject ledger instead; do not leave them in the discount line as well. And if a spotted jar goes out at full price behind a wrap, it is not discounted stock at all: its cost is the label and fitting, which the opaque-label post prices against the wax change.

Complaints: what a replacement and a refund really cost

In the example, 3% of the 704 full-price candles — 21 — come back with photographs of patchy glass. An example 60% are settled with a replacement and the rest with a refund. A replacement costs a second candle (₹208.85), an example courier charge of ₹90.00 and an example ₹40.00 of someone's time reading messages, checking photos and packing: ₹338.85. You do not add the lost sale, because there was none: the customer paid, kept paying, and received a second candle. A refund costs the money returned (₹599.00) and the same ₹40.00 of handling: ₹639.00. You do not add the candle's making cost, because it is already in the month's ₹1,67,079.36.

So complaints cost the example month 13 × ₹338.85 + 8 × ₹639.00 = ₹9,517.04, an average of ₹453.19 each. Every percentage point of complaints is worth about ₹3,190.47 a month at this volume. That is the figure to compare with a process change or a wax change — not the much larger figure double counting produces. If replacements themselves sometimes arrive spotted, they are a second complaint and go on the ledger again; that loop is a strong sign the cause is in transit, not in your pouring.

What does not go in the number: lost future sales, a lower review score, a customer who quietly never returns. Those are real, but there is no honest way to price them from one month's records, and an invented figure here will swamp everything else. Write them beside the number as a qualitative risk — "clear-glass range; complaints visible in reviews" — and let them break a tie, not set the total.

Applied wrongly — making cost added back to every second, and both the lost sale and a making cost added to every complaint — the same month reports ₹56,275.56 instead of ₹26,768.24. The overstatement of ₹29,507.32 is larger than the example month's entire discount line, and it is exactly the kind of figure that makes a dearer wax look as if it pays for itself before a single jar has been tested.

The cheapest test: how many of your passing jars fail after a cycle?

Complaints about appearance on arrival tell you that some jars passed your inspection and changed afterwards. Wet spots that appear after dispatch are commonly linked to temperature cycling — a parcel warming in a van by day and cooling at night, repeatedly — which can open an air gap that was not there at packing. So the first test is not a wax test. It is a measure of your own inspection gap.

Take 12 jars from one batch that all pass your dispatch inspection. Number them, photograph each from four marked sides against a plain light background, and grade them on your house scale. Keep 6 on your shelf as the control. Put 6 through a temperature cycle — an example setting is 8 hours at a measured 35–40°C, 16 hours at room temperature, repeated three to five times; replace it with readings from a min/max thermometer you have sent along your real courier route. Keep every warm phase well below CSI 468's stated 50–53°C melting point, and treat the setting as a test condition, not a storage specification. Photograph and grade both groups again after the last cycle. The courier hub covers logging a real route.

If the cycled jars fail far more often than the shelf jars, two decisions follow. Your inspection should include a cycle on a sample of every batch before you trust a "pass" — evaluating immediately, at one week and after cycling explains the checkpoints — and any wax or process test you run later must be judged after the cycle, not on pour day. If the cycled and shelf jars change equally, or not at all, the complaints are coming from something else: handling, packing pressure, or simply a stricter eye in daylight than under your workshop lights. Photograph a few jars in daylight before you change any material.

The priced kit

The inspection-gap test uses your own production candles, so it can cost nothing beyond the ones you set aside. If you want to pour a dedicated batch with the improved jar preparation at the same time, the kit below prices it with listed CSI packs. The Yankee jar is sold singly at ₹47.20.

A min/max thermometer or a small data logger for the courier route, and anything you use to hold the warm phase, are your own equipment — CSI does not list them. The Eco Thin C1 line is an example wick: CSI publishes no wick size for the Yankee jar, and the test does not involve burning. The 8% load is a working figure; CSI 468's product page states up to 13%.

The decision rule

When the numbers do point to a wax comparison, use the true-cost figure from this page — ₹26,768.24 a month on the examples — as the saving available, and the cost-per-visually-acceptable-candle method to compare candidates. The dearer-wax payback post adds the one-off revalidation cost. All three CSI container waxes — Chunks, CSI 464 and CSI 468 — carry the same adhesion claim on their product pages, so the claim cannot choose between them; only post-cycle results in your own jar can.

The CSI products in this example

Where this fits in the section

This page owns what belongs in the true cost — discounts, complaints and the double-count traps. The section hub uses the true cost at 2,000 candles a month; the reject ledger costs labelled, reworked and scrapped jars; the clear-packaging post asks what complaint-free clear glass is worth to the brand; the storage-stability post follows jars through a month on the shelf; and the acceptable-percentage post helps set the standard your inspection applies.

Frequently asked questions