How Do I Move a Wedding Candle Order from Sample Approval → Final Formula → Exact BOM → Bulk Raw-Material Purchase → Production → QC → Delivery?

The worked order as numbers

The title gives no figures, so this is a worked example to replace with yours: 500 wedding candles in the clear 200ml Salsa jar, filled to a worked 160 g (a 200 ml jar does not hold 200 g of wax; the fill is confirmed by a weighed test pour), 8% Bergamot Amber (12.8 g of oil and 147.2 g of wax each, load as a share of total weight), undyed Natural Soy Pearl Wax, Eco C2 wicks if the bracket confirms them. Extras: three client samples, five retains and five QC burn candles; loss buffer 4%: 535 pours, 85.60 kg of finished mix. You pour 60 a day. The order is worth ₹2,60,000.00 at your ₹520.00 a candle, with a 50% advance of ₹1,30,000.00; the wedding is 45 days away.

The gates, owners and documents

Three things make the gates work. One owner each: the client owns G1, you own the rest, and CSI owns nothing except what we confirm in writing on WhatsApp (stock, lots, dispatch). One document each, kept in one folder with the order. And a hard rule about slips: when a gate closes late, every later date moves by the same number of days. The delivery date in the order is a function of the gates, not a promise that survives them.

The table makes one thing plain: the expensive failures are the ones that happen after money is spent. A rejected sample at G1 costs a 100 g bottle and two weeks; a batch that fails at G6 costs the materials and a cure cycle, in the last week before the wedding. That is why the 5 days between delivery and the wedding in the worked plan are not slack to spend early: they are the only cover for a G6 remake. If your plan has no such gap, say so to the client before G0, not after G6.

G1 to G3: from signed sample to exact BOM

G1: the golden sample (day 17)

The sample kit arrives on day 4 (a worked figure; we do not publish dispatch times, so confirm on WhatsApp). You pour the approval candles and a wick bracket (C2 and Cotton Braided) in the Salsa jar, cure four days (the Bergamot Amber page says 48–72 hours for soy; many makers wait longer), burn-test for three, courier, and the client decides by day 17. The testing sequence for a fragrance you have never used is 6341; if the order also has a custom colour and packaging, the extra development days are in 6358.

G2: freeze the formula (day 18)

Write one sheet that leaves nothing to choose: Natural Soy Pearl Wax; Bergamot Amber at 8% of total weight; Eco C2 (the bracket’s result); clear 200ml Salsa filled to 160 g (with the weighed test-pour figure); add and pour temperatures as you used them in the golden sample, measured with a thermometer; stir time; cure before QC; and the golden sample’s code. Pearl wax’s page states no load ceiling, so the only stated limit is the oil page’s 10%, and the sheet records the load you tested, not the maximum. Whether the fragrance must be final before buying wax and wicks is 6345; here it is, because G1 is closed. Wax and wicks are ordered the same day: both are standard, reusable stock, and the wick size is now known.

G3: the exact BOM (day 19)

Every line follows the same steps: required (candles × grams, plus the extras), loss buffer, 1% heel allowance for wax left in pitchers, 2% for pieces, then round up to in-stock packs and state the leftover. Two rounding choices are worth seeing. The oil is bought as 500 g bottles because Bergamot Amber’s kilo costs ₹1.00 more than two 500 g packs. The wicks are 500 + 50 rather than one 1,000-pack, because C2 is flat per wick and the 1,000 would add ₹4,248.00 for wicks you do not need.

G4: bulk purchase and the incoming check

Before you place the G3 order, send us the purchase sheet on WhatsApp and ask three things: is every line in stock in the quantity you need, can the oil come from one lot, and when can it be dispatched. We will tell you what we can confirm and what we cannot; we do not promise stock depth, lot continuity or transit times in advance. The worked plan assumes five days to arrival.

If a lot differs from the golden sample, it is a change, not a detail; what to retest when only the fragrance lot changes is in the change-control post on fragrance changes. If the client insists on a date you cannot make after a material problem, the honest options are a later date, a split delivery, or a smaller first delivery: the logic is in 6355.

G5 and G6: production and QC

G5, days 25–34. 9 production days at 60 pours a day. Each melt gets a batch sheet: wax and oil lots, weights, add and pour temperatures, stir time, room temperature, candle count, the batch’s QC candle and retains. Each day’s first candle is compared with the golden sample before the rest are poured. If you run a large melter, melt to your wax’s working temperature checked with a thermometer, not to the top of the dial: the Electric Wax Melter page says it melts "10 kg of soy wax in approximately 30 minutes at 100°C", which is the maker’s claim and hotter than many wax pages’ working ranges. Mixing a 10 kg batch evenly has its own post (3150).

G6, days 34–38. The last candles cure three days (calendar time, not labour), then QC: a burn test of each batch’s QC candle (started on earlier batches while later ones were poured), a weight check on a sample from every batch against the 160 g fill, a 100% visual check (surface, wick centring, glass, lid, label), and the rejects counted against the 4% buffer. Cure that must be standardised across pour days is 3158.

G7: packing and delivery

Pack to a written spec: each candle in a Corrugated Box (fit-checked at G2), wrapped or padded with Air Bubble Roll, boxes packed tight in outer cartons from your own supplier, cartons taped with Craft Paper Tape, marked "fragile, this way up" and numbered with a packing list inside each. Candle care stickers (CSI’s roll of 1,000 at ₹699.00) go on every jar. If you ship by courier, they commonly bill on actual or volumetric weight, whichever is higher; check your courier’s terms before quoting delivery.

The CSI materials at each gate

The oil, wax, jar, wick and box in the worked BOM, with the gate at which each is bought. Nothing is ranked on performance; CSI publishes no burn data, which is why the golden sample, not a product page, is the standard.

Frequently asked questions