I'm Running Out of One Raw Material While Having Months of Another — How Do I Synchronise Wax, Fragrance, Wick and Jar Purchasing with Actual Production?

Write the kit for one candle

Manufacturers call it a bill of materials. We will call it the kit. It is the exact list of what goes into one finished candle, in the unit you buy it in. Once you have it written down, every purchasing question becomes multiplication. Without it, every order is a guess about which material "feels low".

Two notes. The kit is per finished, sellable candle, so wax and oil carry a wastage allowance when you order, but the kit itself stays clean. We plan 4% for pour loss and test burns as a working assumption (3–5% is a sensible range). Lids, labels and boxes belong in the kit too if you use them, but CSI does not list them, so add them with your own supplier's figures. An example label at ₹8.00 is a placeholder to replace with your printer's quote, not a price we can give you.

If you make more than one product, write a kit for each. A 100 g candle, an 85 g tin and a 200 g jar share wax and oil but not containers. The method still works. You simply total each material across the kits you plan to pour. I'm Starting with Soy Candles and Wax Melts — Which Raw Materials Can be Shared Between Both Products so I Spend Less on Initial Inventory? and I Want to Sell Jar Candles and Mould Candles — Can I Use the Same Wax, Fragrance Oils, Dyes and Wicks or Will I Need Separate Raw Materials? cover which materials can be shared across products.

Count your stock in candles

Now take your shelf. Divide every material by its kit amount. Here is the example maker. The stock is illustrative, but the pattern is extremely common. The maker produces 250 candles a month and has just noticed that jars are nearly gone while the wick drawer is full.

Read the last column as a stopwatch. At 250 candles a month, the jars run out in 0.18 of a month, about five working days. The stickers go in about a week and the wax in half a month. Meanwhile the wicks would last 3.28 months. Nothing here is "overstocked" in kilos or pieces. The problem only appears when every line is translated into the same unit.

Oil needs one extra step, because 2.1 kg across many scents is not 131.25 candles of any scent you choose. Count oil per scent, with each scent's grams ÷ 16, and compare it with that scent's own monthly sales. A scent with 400 g on hand and 10 candles a month is 2.5 months deep. A scent with 60 g and 30 candles a month runs out after four candles. The demand tiers in I Have 30 Candle Fragrances but Most Sales Come from 10 — How Should I Change My Fragrance Oil Purchasing Quantities Based on Actual Demand? turn that per-scent count into pack sizes.

Order every line to one target

Pick one target for every material. We use 1.5 months of production, 375 candles at 250 a month. It is a working assumption that keeps one order in use while the next is arranged. For each line, the order is target − on hand, with the 4% allowance on wax and oil, rounded up to the nearest pack CSI lists:

After the order, the lines sit almost exactly together. Wax covers 381.48 candles with its allowance, jars 375 and stickers 380. Wicks remain the outlier at 820, and that is fine. The 820 wicks are a sunk purchase, and the fix is simply not to buy wicks until they come back down to the target. That is the whole trick. Synchronising does not mean buying everything every time. It means topping every line up to the same finish line, and some lines will need nothing.

The oil lines are an example split. Four proven scents get a kilo each, one middle scent gets 100 g and one slow scent gets 50 g, which together fill the 4.14 kg shortfall. Your split comes from your own per-scent count. The total is the synchronising part. The split is the demand part.

Pack sizes and ordering rhythm

Pack sizes are the reason materials drift in the first place. A 10 kg bag of wax at 184 g a candle with a 4% allowance makes 52.26 candles. Jars come in fives, stickers in forties, and wicks in 10, 20, 50, 100, 500 or 1,000. None of those divides neatly into the others, so every order leaves small remainders. Over months, the remainders add up to the imbalance you are looking at.

Because most of these lines are priced flat per unit, pack size is a convenience decision, not a price decision, for wax, wicks and jars at CSI's listed packs. That frees you to choose pack sizes for rhythm. Bulky, fast items such as wax and jars get ordered every cycle in amounts that match the target. Small, cheap, slow-to-deplete items such as wicks and stickers get ordered every third or fourth cycle in larger packs, so they stop cluttering every order.

When to place the order is a separate question: it depends on how long delivery takes and how much buffer you keep. CSI does not publish delivery times, so use your own experience of past orders. I'm Growing Quickly but Don't Want to Run Out of Wax — How Do I Set a Reorder Point Based on Monthly Consumption and Supplier Lead Time? and I Have Enough Raw Materials for 500 Candles but Sales Are Growing Unpredictably — How Much Safety Stock Should I Maintain? set the reorder point and the safety stock. This page sets what goes into the order once you place it.

The 100-candle kit

Some makers find it easier to order in fixed blocks of candles rather than recalculating a target each time. A block of 100 is a useful unit, because most of CSI's packs round to it cleanly:

The non-oil kit costs ₹18,118.00 for 100 candles, or ₹181.18 a candle against the pure kit figure of ₹172.56. The difference is not waste. It is the 0.86 kg of wax and 20 stickers that roll into the next kit. After five kits the carried wax adds up to 4.32 kg, enough to skip one 10 kg bag on the sixth. Keep a running carry-over line and the kits stay in step on their own.

What pulls materials out of step

Breakage and rejects hit containers, not wax. A cracked jar or a rejected candle consumes a jar but gives back some wax if you remelt it. Over months, jars fall faster than the kit says. If your reject rate is known, add it to the jar line only. My Cheap Candle Jars Have a Higher Breakage Rate — How Do I Include Broken Jars in the True Cost of Every Sellable Candle? prices the true cost of a broken jar.

Test burns use oil and wax but rarely jars. A maker who tests in small pots draws down oil faster than candle sales explain. That is what the 4% allowance is for. If you run a lot of tests, raise it on oil alone.

A second product shares some lines. Launch an 85 g tin and your wax, oil and wicks now serve two kits while the jars serve one. Keep a kit per product and total them, or the shared lines will run short while jars pile up.

A big one-off order jumps the queue. A 200-candle corporate job consumes a month of every line at once. Buy for it separately, against its own kit, and do not let it drain the stock that feeds your regular sales. A Customer Wants 500 Custom Candles — How Much Wax, Fragrance Oil, Wick and Jar Inventory Should I Buy Before Starting Production? and I Have to Produce 5,000 Candles in the Same Jar — How Do I Calculate Wax, Fragrance, Wick and Jar Requirements Including Reasonable Wastage? cover order-specific purchasing.

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