Should I Test My Bestselling Fragrances at 30, 60, 90 and 180 Days to Understand How They Change During Storage?

Your four points, plus the one most makers forget

Testing at 30, 60, 90 and 180 days is a well-shaped plan. It catches early change, shows whether that change keeps going, covers a typical festive hold, and reaches a six-month hold for slower sellers. But a sequence of ratings only means something if you know where it started. Day 0 — the first assessment after the product page’s stated cure, such as 48–72 hours for soy on most CSI oil pages, or 72–96 hours for Royal Oud — is the baseline every later point is compared to.

Some scents also move in the first days after cure. Royal Oud’s page says oud takes longer to express, and Vetiver’s page says it builds slowly. For bestsellers like those, a day 7 or day 14 point (suggested) tells you whether “stronger at day 30” is a scent maturing rather than ageing.

Then look at the gap. Between day 90 and day 180 there are three months with no information. If the candle is fine at 90 and clearly changed at 180, you will not know whether it turned at day 100 or day 170. If your stock regularly waits four or five months, add a day 120 point. If it never waits beyond 90, the 180 point is still useful, but as a margin rather than a target.

Sniff candles and burn candles are different tools

This is where many test plans quietly break. A candle that has been burned has a melted, resolidified surface, a shorter wick and a different headspace. It is no longer a stored candle. If you burn your day-30 candle and then sniff the same jar at day 60, you are measuring the effect of a burn, not of storage.

So split the set. Sniff candles are never lit. They are assessed for cold throw and character at every point, which lets you follow the same three jars through six months. Burn candles are consumed: a fresh, unlit pair from the same pour is burned at each point, side by side with a fresh reference, and then retired.

A rating scale that survives six months

Over 180 days your memory of day 0 will fade faster than any fragrance. Write the scale down before the first session and use the same words at every point. A simple five-point cold-throw scale works: 1 barely noticeable, 2 soft, 3 clear at arm’s length, 4 strong, 5 very strong. Add a separate character note — “bright lavender leading”, “herbal middle now forward”, “musk base dominant” — because a candle can keep its strength while its character shifts.

For burn candles, record room size, burn time before assessment and where assessors stood, and rate hot throw on the same scale. Use at least two assessors, code the jars so nobody knows which is aged and which is the reference, and change the order in which jars are smelled at each session. If one assessor is consistently harsher, that is fine; what matters is that the same people rate every point.

These are suggested starting conventions, not an industry standard. Their only job is to make day 180 comparable with day 0.

The candle count for three bestsellers

Suppose your three bestsellers (an example) are Lavender, Roasted Coffee and Dark Vanilla, each made as a 200 g candle at 8% of total weight: 184 g wax and 16 g oil.

The oil for each bestseller is 17 × 16 g = 272 g, which three 100 g samples cover, leaving a little for the sealed retained sample. Lavender costs 3 × ₹540.00 = ₹1,620.00, Roasted Coffee 3 × ₹390.00 = ₹1,170.00 and Dark Vanilla 3 × ₹790.00 = ₹2,370.00, so ₹1,620.00 + ₹1,170.00 + ₹2,370.00 = ₹5,160.00 for the three. Wax is 51 × 184 g = 9,384 g for the scented candles plus 3 × 200 g = 600 g for unscented controls, 9,984 g in all — one 10 kg pack of CSI 464. Jars, wicks and lids are your own production items.

The honest problem with a fresh reference at day 180

A fresh reference is the best defence against memory, but it has a limit worth admitting. The retained oil you pour it from has also been sitting for 180 days. Sealed, cool, dark and with little headspace, it is likely to have changed less than oil in a candle on a warm shelf, but it is not the oil you received. A new delivery is not a perfect reference either, because it is a different lot.

Reading the shape of the change

Four points give you a curve, and its shape says more than any single number.

What the results should change

A six-month curve for each bestseller is worth more than any promise. Use it to set how long each one can wait, how far ahead you pour, and how much oil to hold. If Lavender stays steady to 180 but Roasted Coffee dips after 90, the two should not share an inventory policy.

It should also limit your oil orders. CSI lists no oil pack above 1 kg, so production quantities are 1 kg packs or a WhatsApp quote, with no bulk discount published. Do not buy more of a bestseller than you will use inside the period your own curve supports. And because CSI oil pages publish no shelf life or storage guidance, ask on WhatsApp (+91 7397976926) for the IFRA certificate, MSDS and any storage advice for each oil and lot, in writing. Your curve and their written guidance together are your evidence.

Where this page fits

CSI already has guides that cover parts of this question. This page answers one fragrance-ageing decision; these cover the neighbouring questions:

Three things to buy for this decision

Frequently asked questions