I Need to Make 500 Candles Every Month — Where Should I Buy Wax, Fragrance Oil, Wicks and Jars in India?

What 500 candles a month actually consumes

If you are asking this, you already have a recipe that sells and a burn-tested jar. What is missing is the translation from "500 candles" into quantities a supplier can pack and invoice, arriving before the pour days that need them.

This series calculates fragrance load as a share of the finished candle, so a 200g candle at 8% is 184g of wax and 16g of oil. Some pages, including Luxury Soy Wax Chunks, phrase load as a percentage of wax weight; pick one convention and write it on the recipe card. Then add a planning allowance for wax left on the melter wall, top-ups and rejected pours. This guide uses 4%, turning 500 sellable candles into 520 pours — a planning figure, not a measured loss rate, so replace it with your own after three months.

If your 500 candles are a mix of sizes, build the month SKU by SKU from this table and add the rows. And if your recipe runs at 10%, a 200g candle is 180g of wax and 20g of oil: the month needs 2 kg less wax but 2 kg more oil — a 25% rise in the dearest line per kilo. Load decisions are purchasing decisions.

The monthly basket, costed line by line

The full month at listed prices for 520 pours of a 200g container candle at 8%: CSI 464 wax (stated up to 10%), four scents spanning price bands with two 1 kg bottles each plus a 500g buffer of the best seller, and Eco Candle Wicks Thick (C2), which the coloured 200ml Salsa pages say the jar "pairs well with". The clear Salsa page states no wick, so your burn test decides.

₹1,10,883.60 ÷ 500 = ₹221.77 is the month's spend per candle sold; ₹203.72 is the material inside one candle. The gap is the allowance plus stock that carries forward — 4.32 kg of wax, 180g of oil, 30 wicks, 30 jars and 500 care labels — so every monthly basket should start with a stock-take. Wax is the line people are most tempted to switch, so here is the same basket on each production-pack wax:

The spread is ₹23,780 a month but only ₹43.76 inside a candle. You feel the first number in the bank; your customer only meets the second. A switch on a proven line must be justified in a 10 kg test batch with a full cure, not on this table — the wax-only view is in buying 100 kg of soy wax.

Where to buy each line — and why one supplier makes sense at 500

Three routes are open at this volume: a specialist candle raw-material supplier stocking all four lines, a mix of marketplaces and single-category sellers, or importers and packaging factories direct. Factory minimums usually suit makers at many times your volume. At 500 a month the real choice is one specialist or several generalists, and the case for one is operational: every extra supplier adds a delivery, an invoice, a freight charge and a line that can be missing on pour day. A pallet of wax is worthless if the jars are stuck in transit. The trade-offs of consolidating are covered in moving from several suppliers to one and can I buy all my candle-making materials from one supplier.

The gap column is the honest part. Nothing in a 500-candle month is blocked, but wax, oil and jars top out at packs that mean several per month — manageable in a small workshop, and the reason a repeating basket moves to WhatsApp. For how established brands source, see where professional candle brands buy their raw materials.

Pack sizes that change the bill, and the ones that don't

Bigger packs across the board do not bring the bill down. On one line the pack size changes the unit price a lot, on some a little, and on the biggest line not at all.

Jars are the one line where the pack decision is worth thousands of rupees a month — buy 50s and 100s of your standard jar, never 5s. Wax on CSI 464 and Luxury Soy Chunks is flat from 1 kg up, so bag size is a handling choice; Eco wicks are flat from 10 to 1,000, so pack size only sets how often you reorder. Oils step down a little at 1 kg on most scents (Lavender by ₹19 a kilo), so take the 1 kg bottle for any scent you use a kilo of within two months.

The four products that carry the month

Each card lists every pack with its unit price. If your recipe already runs on a different wax, wick or jar, keep it — switching at 500 a month is a new test, not a purchasing decision.

Fragrance oil gets no card because the four scents are yours to choose; in this basket the oil inside a candle runs from ₹49.09 (British Rose) to ₹83.54 (Lavender). Sizing a scent library so each 1 kg bottle turns over monthly is covered in wholesale fragrance oil for candle manufacturers, and the monthly oil question on its own is answered in buying 5–10 kg of fragrance oil every month.

A reorder rhythm for a 500-candle month

One delivery on the 1st works for some makers with dry storage and steady sales. Most do better with a split rhythm, because lines differ in bulk, fragility and price behaviour. Assuming four production weeks, 520 pours is 130 a week — about 23.9 kg of wax, 2.08 kg of oil, 130 wicks and 130 jars.

Ten bags a month is 100 kg against 95.68 kg of use, so 4.32 kg carries over each month. Over a year that draw needs 115 bags, not 120 — about one month in two or three can drop to nine, if the stock-take comes before the order. Separately, keep a reserve you do not plan to use: roughly one production week of wax, about 24 kg, plus a 100-pack of jars. If it goes untouched for three months, shrink it; reorder-point maths for a wax-only draw is in the 100 kg soy wax guide.

The cash cycle: why you need more than one month's bill

A month of materials costs ₹1.11 lakh, but the cash behind them is usually more: a candle poured today sells in two or three weeks, and some customers pay weeks after that. The table adds the three places money sits — shelf, curing rack, unpaid invoices — for two illustrative businesses pouring 130 candles a week at ₹203.72 of materials each. Swap in your own assumptions.

Two lessons. The drop rhythm is a cash tool: fortnightly deliveries halve the shelf figure without changing a listed price. And how you sell matters more than how you buy: B's materials match A's, but stockist terms and a longer cure almost double the money locked up — before labour, packaging and courier. Work this out before signing a first wholesale deal. Why the cure cannot be skipped is covered in why your candle needs a 14-day cure.

Turning the basket into one recurring order

A recurring order is an hour-long routine at month end, not a bigger one-off order. Its only inputs are last month's sales, the shelf and next month's plan.

On discounts: CSI's listed prices on most waxes and wicks are flat and do not fall because you order monthly. A recurring basket gives the supplier a known list, quantity and delivery pattern to quote on WhatsApp; whether that quote is below listed prices, and by how much, is for CSI to confirm on your basket. Don't plan margin on a number you don't have in writing. The honest levers are in better pricing when moving from 10 kg to 100 kg orders.

Frequently asked questions