I Have 20 Fragrances but Only Five Sell Quickly — Could Consolidating Fragrance Inventory into Fewer High-Volume Oils Reduce My Average Purchase Cost?

Your range on one page: grams per oil

"Only five sell quickly" is your observation (title). To turn it into a purchasing decision, write down candles a month per scent, multiply by grams of oil per candle (16 g for 200 g at 8%, total-weight basis) and sort. Here is a worked range of 20 scents at 300 candles a month (4.8 kg of oil), priced as 20 CSI oils so the rupees are real. The mix is illustrative; it is not a claim about which scents sell, and your own records replace it.

The five fast scents use 60% of the oil. The other fifteen use between 32 g and 256 g a month each: for most of them even a 500 g pack is more than three months of stock. That shape, a short head and a long tail, is typical of ranges built by adding scents over time, and it is why "buy everything in kilos" and "keep everything in small bottles" are both wrong.

Where the per-gram gain comes from

CSI's oil ladders fall steeply from 15 g to 100 g and again to 500 g, then often flatten from 500 g to 1 kg. Here is what moving up the ladder is worth per gram on the five worked fast sellers:

Two things stand out. The gain is real but modest from 100 g up (single digits to low teens in percent); the big gains are lower down, where 15 g and 50 g sample sizes cost much more per gram (Citrus Lemon's kilo is 47.8% below its 15 g). And the gain differs oil by oil: on Jasmine the 500 g is the cheapest per gram; on CSI's Woody Oud the per-gram price is flat from 100 g to 1 kg, so consolidation onto it buys nothing per gram; on a few oils, such as Sage and Cedarwood, the kilo costs more per gram than the 500 g. Check each oil before you plan packs. Deciding which oils deserve kilo purchases in the first place is the 1 kg or trial-size question; dividing a purchase across scents by expected sales is the five-fragrance purchase split.

Three ways to buy the same 4.8 kg

All three options buy 4.8 kg of oil a month for 300 candles. Only the packs and the number of scents change. Pack rule for C and B: the cheapest of CSI's 100 g, 500 g and 1 kg that is no more than 3 months of that oil's use (judgement).

Right-sizing (C) takes 4.4% off the oil bill; consolidating (B) takes 11.9%. The step from C to B is ₹1,536.84 a month, ₹18,442.08 a year, and part of it is not a pack effect at all: the dropped scents include some of the dearer oils in this worked range, so moving their buyers to cheaper kept oils lowers the average per gram. That is a product decision as much as a purchasing one, and it rests on buyers being happy with the swap.

Split it and the picture is clearer. Price the 8-oil range with each kept oil still in the pack it used in C, and the cost is ₹18,199.84: the ₹1,323.69 between C and that figure is the mix effect, the dropped scents' buyers now pouring cheaper kept oils. The remaining ₹213.15 is the pack effect, kept oils moving to bigger packs because they now sell more (Lavender to the kilo, the seasonal slot from 100 g to 1 kg). Only the pack effect is a cheaper price for the same oil; the mix effect is a cheaper product, and whether your customers accept it is a sales question. Count only same-oil, cheaper-per-gram savings and right-sizing alone captures 81% of them.

The risk to range appeal, in rupees

Option B assumes the 78 candles a month sold in the 12 dropped scents keep selling as kept scents. Some buyers will switch; some will not. Suppose 80% switch (worked example — your test, below, replaces it). Then 15.6 candles a month go unsold. At ₹300.00 contribution a candle (selling price minus materials, worked example), that is ₹4,680.00 a month of contribution lost. You also stop buying the oil for those candles (₹801.82 a month), so the net cost is ₹3,878.18 a month, against the ₹1,536.84 the cut added on purchase price.

On these figures, consolidation beyond right-sizing only breaks even on purchase cost if about 91.8% of dropped-scent buyers switch. In practice few makers can count on that, which is why the purchase-cost case for cutting the range is weak and the real case, where there is one, is elsewhere: fewer SKUs to photograph, label, test after a wax change and keep in stock. The cost of testing every SKU when a raw material changes (one reason a shorter range is cheaper to run) is the 20-SKU change-control triage.

Dead stock and cash on the shelf

Consolidation is often sold as a dead-stock cure. It is partly right. With 20 scents in 100 g bottles, average stock on the shelf is half a bottle of each: about ₹4,801.45. Right-sizing raises it to ₹12,266.85 (bigger packs on the fast oils), and the 8-oil range sits at ₹12,825.56. More cash on the shelf, but in oils that turn over within three months.

The dead-stock gain is in exposure per scent, not in total stock. In option A, dropping a slow scent strands at most an open 100 g bottle. Dead stock grows when a maker buys 500 g or 1 kg of a slow scent "for the price": at 32 g a month, a kilo of the slowest worked oil is years of stock. The rule that prevents it is the cover cap, not the range size. What to do with expensive slow oils that are already on the shelf, and whether to keep them in small packs or drop them, is the discontinue-or-keep post; whether any single oil justifies a 5 kg pack is the consumption-threshold post.

The rotating seasonal slot

Keep one of the eight slots for a scent that changes with the season: a spiced gourmand from October to December, a fresh citrus or green in summer. Buy it in the pack that matches one season of use, not a year. In the worked range, Pumpkin Spice at 192 g a month on its own would stay in 100 g bottles; as the slot in an 8-oil range it rises to about 348 g a month and moves to the kilo, which is 5.31 a gram against 5.90 for 100 g. Its 500 g is no cheaper per gram than the 100 g, so the step that pays is all the way to 1 kg, and only if one season will use it.

How to consolidate without losing customers

If, after right-sizing, you still want a shorter range, change it the way you would change a formula: one step, measured, reversible.

Four fast-seller ladders and a seasonal slot

Four of the worked fast sellers and the worked seasonal slot, with how long each pack lasts at its worked use. These are illustrations priced on CSI oils, not claims about what sells; CSI publishes no sales rankings and no throw data. Chosen on page statements, price and stock on 4 October 2026.

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