How Do I Calculate My Wholesale Wick Purchase Quantity from Monthly Candle Sales, Wick Usage per Candle, Reject Allowance, Safety Stock and Supplier Lead Time?

Your order, made precise

The worked example, labelled. You've finished the wick work this series is about: each formula's large-flame or soot problem was diagnosed, a smaller or different CSI wick was tested to the floor, replicated and written into the master formula (6996). Now you're moving from 100-packs to wholesale quantities for three SKUs, each on its own wick:

You order once a month. Your supplier's lead time is about three weeks to your door (yours to measure; CSI publishes none), and a new lot spends about ten days in its check, so call the lead time a month and the cover two months. You keep 23 QC wicks back from each order: 20 as the retained reference for the lot (6995) and 3 for the new-lot check (6994). Safety stock here is the simple version, ten production days of use at 25 production days a month; if several SKUs share one wick, size the safety stock on pooled demand instead (6997).

Why the calculated quantity comes out wrong: causes, ranked

The ranking is our judgement from how small makers' wick orders usually miss. The table keeps causes that come from how customers burn your candles apart from what you make and count, because one of them can quietly inflate your reject allowance.

Cause 5 is easy to miss. If a wave of "your candle smokes" messages comes in after a festive season, some makers start wicking extra spares and call it rejects. Usually the cause is trimming, long burns or fans (the series' soot hub explains why: 6921). Burn a retained candle from the batch the way your label says before letting it touch the reject rate. Cause 6 is cadence territory: if a formula might change wicks, keep its cover short (6998).

Each term, and where its number comes from

Reject allowance deserves the most care. It's wicks lost in production (a tab that lifts, a wick that leans and has to be pulled, a pour that buries a wick) divided by candles made, measured over at least 3 batches. Double-wick candles commonly lose more, because there are two wicks to place and keep straight (a common observation, not CSI data); 4% for SKU B against 3% for SKU A is the worked example's assumption, not a rule. Months of cover is where long lead times enter: a three-week courier time plus a ten-day lot check is about a month, so a monthly order needs two months of cover on the first order. Safety stock here uses the simplest rule (ten production days of use, labelled); for SKU A that's 20.6 wicks a day × 10 = 206.

Three SKUs worked, and the order that results

The whole first order is ₹19,058.20. Notice the rounding in column B: CSI's C1 10-pack is out of stock on 7 October 2026, so a C1 count can only be made of 20s, 50s and larger, and 762 rounds to 770: the nearest smaller mix, 760, falls two wicks short. Column A can use the C2 10-pack and lands within one wick of the need. Argued against our own interest: rounding SKU B up to a 1,000-pack would add ₹1,357.00 of cash for wicks at exactly the same ₹5.90 each. We'll sell you the 1,000-pack when your count is near 1,000; for 762, buy 770.

Counting SKU B per candle instead of per wick is the most expensive error in the table: the same steps with one wick per candle come out at 263 wicks to order, 499 short of the real need, and a double-wick SKU that runs out mid-month is exactly where people start "borrowing" a different wick. For a double-wick candle's own wick choice (reduce both before removing one), see 6917.

Before the wholesale order: three gates

The formula assumes three things are already true. Each has its own check, and the third is a small controlled test you can run on the first production batch.

The confirmation candles cost little next to the order they protect: three SKU A candles are about ₹525.90 of materials at 1 kg oil and 10 kg wax prices (Woody Oud, CSI 464, C2; your jars excluded), against ₹10,195.20 of wicks and a month of production. If you're buying on CSI's stock, the published post on first burn-test wick purchases covers the sample-to-bulk step; this post assumes it's done.

The CSI wick buy list and the step to production

CSI's sized, tabbed wicks are three rungs, Eco Thin (C1), Eco Thick (C2) and Cotton Braided, with nothing in between and one wooden width. That makes the quantity sheet short: most ranges have one to three wick lines. It also means there is no nearby size to borrow if a line runs out, which is why safety stock and the "wicks per candle" column matter. When your counts are ready, send the sheet on WhatsApp; we'll confirm stock and dispatch time, and tell you plainly if a variant is short rather than substituting. Lot continuity across orders is something to ask about, not something our pages promise.

Argued against our own interest, again: don't buy a festive year's wicks in October because the sheet makes it easy. Run the formula with your festive months' real candle counts and keep the cover at what your lead time needs. For a published view on when bulk-buying a single size is justified at all, see the post on buying 1,000 wicks only after every fragrance has passed. The full series route from first soot to this order is the playbook.

What to buy, and what to skip

Four items for the worked example, chosen on page statements, price and stock on 7 October 2026. CSI publishes no wick, soot or lead-time data, so nothing is ranked on performance, and each card says when not to buy.

Skip for now: 1,000-packs for counts nowhere near 1,000; wick lines for formulas that haven't passed replicates; and any "spare" wick of a different size bought as insurance. A spare that isn't approved for the formula isn't a spare.

Frequently asked questions