I Have a Corporate Order for 250 × 200 g Candles — How Much Wax and Fragrance Should I Purchase if I Want 5% Extra Finished Stock?

Two meanings of 5% extra

When a corporate buyer says "keep a few spare", they mean candles: finished, labelled, identical to the rest, ready to replace one that arrived broken or to hand to someone added to the list late. Makers often translate that into "buy 5% more wax". But wax on its own is not a candle. To pour 13 more candles you need 13 more jars, 13 more wicks and 13 × 16 g more oil, as well as the wax.

The middle column is a common and quietly expensive mistake. You pay for about 2,406.90 g of wax you cannot turn into candles, and when a gift arrives broken you still have nothing to send. The right-hand column adds 13 candles' worth of every material. Its wax line, 50,601.84 g, is almost the same as the middle column's. The difference is that here the wax comes with the 214.24 g of oil, 13 jars and 14 wicks that turn it into candles.

The calculation for 267 candles

Note that the finished-stock candles are added before the pour loss, as candles, and the pour loss is added once, to the material. That order matters. Adding 3% loss to the candle count as well would pour candles you do not need and double-count the loss. The hub, 300 × 80 g wedding order, sets out the same order of operations for a wedding job.

Buying Saffron Cedarwood: the 500 g is the cheaper bottle

You need 4,400.16 g. Saffron Cedarwood Fragrance Oil is listed at 15 g ₹103.84, 50 g ₹354.00, 100 g ₹696.20, 500 g ₹2,584.20 and 1 kg ₹6,867.60. Per gram that is ₹6.92, ₹7.08, ₹6.96, ₹5.17 and ₹6.87. The 500 g is the cheapest per gram by a wide margin, and the 1 kg costs more than two 500 g bottles. The same pattern appears on Sage and Cedarwood. Here is what that means for this order:

Nine 500 g bottles save ₹6,796.80 against four kilos and a half-kilo, and they bring the fragrance cost per candle down from ₹109.88 to ₹82.69. Always check a specific oil's ladder before assuming the kilo is the bulk buy. Prices on the store change, so check the product page on the day you order.

The complete order

Wax. 50,601.84 g of Luxury Soy Wax CSI 464 rounds to 5 × 10 kg + 1 × 1 kg, ₹25,877.40. CSI 464 is ₹507.40 a kilo at 1, 5 and 10 kg and is rated up to 10% fragrance load by the wax maker, comfortably above 8%. CSI's own earlier guidance gives it a melt and pour range of 80–90°C; confirm that on the product page. Jars. The White Matte Glass Jar is ₹354.00 for 5 (₹70.80 a jar). Its fill weight is not published, so pour one to 200 g and check the line. 273 jars round to 55 packs, 275 jars. Wicks. Eco Candle Wicks Thin C1, 3 × 100-pack, 300 wicks. Confirm the wick with your test candles; CSI does not publish wick sizes per jar.

One finished candle costs ₹82.69 of fragrance, ₹93.36 of wax, ₹70.80 for the jar and ₹5.90 for the wick: ₹252.76 in material, before lids, labels, boxes, branding, courier, labour and GST, which come from your own quotes. Spread across the 250 the client pays for, the order is ₹281.50 a candle.

How big should the buffer be?

There is no published standard. The right size depends on how the candles travel, how firm the client's list is, and whether spares are likely to be reordered. Here is the same order at four buffer sizes, so you can see what each costs.

The cost of a buffer grows roughly in step with the number of extra candles, with small jumps where a pack boundary is crossed. For a corporate order that ships in one consignment to one office, 2% may be enough. For gifts couriered to individual addresses, where each parcel is a separate breakage risk, 5% to 10% is easier to defend. Your own damage and reorder history is better than any of these figures.

What to do with the extra stock

Decide before you pour who owns the spares, and write it down. Three arrangements are common, and each changes how you price the order.

For a maker's cushion, a branded corporate candle is harder to sell on than a plain one. If the jar carries the client's logo, spares are only worth something to that client. Keep the branding on a removable sleeve or label until dispatch if you want the option of selling unused spares in your own range.

Two sibling calculations sit next to this one. I Need 1,000 × 60 g Wedding Favours — How Much Wax Should I Buy When I Also Need 50 Additional Candles for Samples, Replacements and Breakage? handles a fixed number of extras split by purpose on a wedding order. I Have a 2,000-Piece Corporate Candle Order with 100 g Fill Weight — How Much Wax and Fragrance Should I Secure Before Accepting the Deadline? looks at securing enough material for 2,000 corporate candles before you accept a deadline. For a fragrance-only safety margin on a larger run, see I Need 500 × 200 g Candles at 10% Fragrance — How Much Fragrance Oil Should I Purchase Including 5% Safety Stock?.

Frequently asked questions