I Received a Large Candle Order During My Normal Busy Season — How Do I Calculate Whether Accepting It Will Delay Existing Customer Orders?

Your season, written as weekly numbers

The title gives no figures, so here is a labelled worked example. Replace every number with yours; the method is the point. Capacity: 600 candles poured a week, the rate you can hold for weeks, not your best day (how to measure it: the maximum-capacity post). Existing confirmed orders: 810 candles that must be poured in weeks 1–4 to meet dates you have already given. Website forecast: 980 candles across five weeks, rising towards Diwali, from last season's sales. The new order: 1,200 corporate candles of 200 g at 8% (16 g oil + 184 g wax), in your proven festive candle, to be delivered by Wednesday 4 November 2026, so the last pour is Saturday 31 October (a 72-hour set, then packing). Today is Wednesday 7 October; week 1 starts Monday 12 October.

Everything is in candles to pour each week, because that is where capacity binds. Due dates are already moved back by the 72-hour set and packing time, so an order due on a Monday sits in the previous week's pours. A 200 g candle is 0.2 kg of finished mix, which is how the melter sees it.

The loading table, as the client asked

Weeks 1–3 need 2,610 candles against 1,800: 810 short, which is 1.35 weeks of your capacity. Someone waits for those candles, and the table tells you who if you decide the priority in advance. If you protect the new order (as clients usually expect), the shortfall lands on your existing customers and your website buyers:

By the end of week 3, customers who were promised candles before Diwali are 810 candles behind, and the backlog is not cleared until week 5, after Diwali. That is the delay the title asks about, measured: up to about two weeks for some existing customers, in the weeks that matter most to them.

Five ways to make room, priced

A temporary packer is usually the strongest single lever, because once a melter is owned labelling and packing take the most minutes per candle (the station breakdown is in the 21-day hub). Overtime is the weakest: it costs more per extra candle, it still falls short here, and fatigue in the busiest weeks shows up as rejects. A longer website dispatch promise costs nothing if it is honest and set before the orders come in; changing it after customers have paid is breaking a promise, not moving one.

The plan that protects every promise

The worked-example plan combines the three no-regret levers: a temporary packer for weeks 1–3, a website dispatch promise of 5–7 days in weeks 2–3 (set on the site before week 2), and the new order front-loaded into the weeks with room. Existing confirmed orders keep every date.

Every week is now inside capacity, but the spare is thin: 4.0% in week 1, 5.6% in week 2 and 8.9% in week 3. A rejected melt or a sick day uses it up. That is why the plan adds one Sunday shift in week 1 (about 100 candles, ₹2,400.00 in overtime on the worked example) as the buffer, and why the honest internal deadline is a day or two before the real one (the spare-capacity post). The new client's candles are all poured by Saturday 31 October, so delivery on Wednesday 4 November holds.

Customer-promise protection, in practice: the order of priority is confirmed orders, then website orders already paid, then the new order, then website orders not yet placed (whose promise you can still set). Write that down before the season, so the decision in week 2 is already made. Running website sales and a corporate order side by side has its own capacity method in the true-available-capacity post.

Materials for the new order, kept separate

The purchase sheet covers the new order only, in the series format: required, planned extras (10: retains and burn checks), a 4% loss buffer, a 1% heel allowance and 2% wick defects, rounded up to in-stock CSI packs with leftovers. Your existing orders and website stock are planned separately; how much extra wax a 1,000-candle corporate order needs beyond the exact fill is covered in the extra-wax post.

₹186.62 per saleable candle is CSI materials only and excludes jars, labels, boxes, labour, the temporary packer, freight and GST. At the worked-example price of ₹450.00 a candle the order is worth ₹5,40,000.00; whether that price covers your true cost in a month of overtime and temporary staff is a question for the hidden-losses-at-scale post. Three pack notes: CSI 464 is flat per kilo, so two deliveries (₹1,66,096.80 before week 1 with all the oil and wicks, ₹57,843.60 of wax before week 2 ends) cost nothing extra; Cinnamon Vanilla's 1 kg is cheaper per gram than its 500 g; and for the last 329 g, four 100 g bottles beat a 500 g by ₹365.80.

What to buy, and what not to

Four items for a busy-season order in a proven candle, chosen on page statements, price and stock on 7 October 2026. CSI publishes no burn or throw data, so nothing is ranked on performance. The first card is equipment you may not need at all.

Not on the list: a new scent for the corporate client (that is development time you do not have in a busy season), and a second melter if your bottleneck is hands. A Steel Pouring Pitcher Large (₹708.00) for the temporary helper is the kind of small purchase that does move a busy week; the Small pitcher is out of stock on 7 October 2026.

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