I Want to Launch 10 Candle SKUs but Minimise the Number of Raw Materials I Stock — How Should I Standardise Wax, Jars, Wicks and Dyes?

Every material has a fixed cost before it makes a single candle

When a maker plans ten SKUs, each one tends to arrive with its own personality: this scent deserves a frosted jar, that one a tin, this one a deeper colour, that one a wooden wick. Each choice looks small. But every distinct material on the list carries four costs that do not depend on how much of it you use. A smallest pack you must buy to have any at all. A remainder after rounding to packs, which sits on the shelf. A qualification test, because a new jar, wax or wick has to be burn-tested with your oils. And a reorder point — one more thing that can run out and stop a SKU.

Standardising is the practice of paying those four costs as few times as possible, while keeping the variety where the customer actually sees it. For a candle range that is almost always the fragrance. The rest — wax, jar, wick, sticker, dye — is the platform, and the fewer versions of it you run, the less cash sits in remainders and the fewer tests stand between you and a restock. The five-scent platform post introduces the platform idea with a single jar; this page extends it to two formats and colour.

The five standards for a ten-SKU range

Wax. One wax for all ten SKUs is the biggest single simplification. This page uses Natural Soy Pearl Wax because it is the only CSI soy wax with a real bulk step (₹450.00 a kilo at 1 kg, ₹424.80 from 5 kg) and a ten-SKU range reaches it. Its page publishes no fragrance ceiling, no melt point and no pour temperature, so 8% is a working figure in a 6–10% test range and the standard is only valid once all ten oils pass in it. If you want a published ceiling, Luxury Soy Wax CSI 464 (10%) and Luxury Soy Wax Chunks (13%) are the alternatives at higher per-kilo prices.

Jars. Two formats give the range two price points without multiplying materials. The Golden Aluminium Tin has a published 85 g fill — one of two published fills in CSI's catalogue — at ₹360.00 for 12. The 200 ml Salsa Glass Jar comes with a golden lug cap (₹29.50 each at 50 and 100), which removes a lid line; its fill is not published, so this page uses an illustrative 170 g — weigh a test pour. A third or fourth jar style would add a smallest pack, a remainder and a wick test each.

Wicks. One wick type per jar format, chosen by test. CSI publishes no wick size per jar, so each format gets two candidates — Eco Thick C2 and Eco Thin C1 — in two test candles each, and the winner becomes the standard for every scent in that format. If one scent fails with the standard wick, record it as an exception rather than adding a wick type for everyone.

Dyes. Two colours plus uncoloured cover a surprising range: different doses of one dye give lighter and deeper shades, and red and blue together commonly give purples — check on test pieces, because CSI publishes no dye dose per kilo and colour depends on wax and oil. Each additional colour is at least a ₹236.00 bottle. The pastel-pink rose post covers colour trials in detail.

What a little extra variety costs, priced

Here are four common additions to a standardised ten-SKU range, each priced against the standardised plan with CSI's listed packs. None is a reason never to add variety; each is the number to weigh against what the variety earns.

None of these is large on its own. Together, the second wax, third jar and third dye add ₹4,461.20 to this order before any test cost — and, more importantly, they add three more things that can run out. On a range of ten SKUs, a shortage of a shared material stops all ten; a shortage of a SKU-specific material stops one. Standardising makes the shared materials deep and the specific ones few. Safety stock for materials that stop the whole line picks up from there.

The standardised BOM, stacked and rounded

Per unit, a Salsa candle at an illustrative 170 g and 8% is 13.6 g of oil and 156.4 g of wax; a tin at its published 85 g is 6.8 g and 78.2 g. Thirty of each SKU, 4 wick-test candles per format (in the first scent of each), 3% rejects and 5% pour loss; 2% breakage applies to the glass Salsa jars only — tins do not break.

Two of these oils show why the oil is the one place not to standardise packs either. Vanilla Orange Blossom is listed only at 50 g, 100 g and 1 kg, and Pomegranate Splash has no 15 g; each is rounded to its own ladder. Every other line in the range is one total:

Material cost per unit at production rates, before oil: about ₹105.38 for a Salsa candle (Soy Pearl at ₹424.80 a kilo, jar with cap, Thick C2 wick) and ₹69.12 for a tin (Thin C1 wick). Add each scent's oil at its own rate. These exclude labour, packaging, freight and GST, and the non-CSI items below.

Buy now, buy after the standards are proven

A standard is a promise that one material works for every SKU it covers, so it has to be proven before it is bought deep. The test stage proves the wick per format and the wax with all ten oils; colour trials prove the two dyes. Wax and jars can be bought early — they are shared by everything and no single result is likely to change them — but production wicks wait for the burn.

Related questions in this cluster

For a single-jar platform across five scents, shared wax and jars, separate oils. For sizes rather than formats, three sizes in one plan and the 15-SKU grid. For moulded or melt lines that sit outside the platform, sculptural candles and candles plus melts. The budget-side version of this argument is standardising on one jar and one wax, and every new SKU you add later starts with a complete BOM before buying.

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