Candle Cost Calculator

In short A candle's materials cost is the sum of five lines and the interesting part is which of them is largest. For a 200 gram candle with wax at 800 a kilo, 16 grams of oil at 3,000 a kilo, a 15 wick, a 120 jar and 40 of label and box, the total is 383 — and the wax is only 160 of it while the jar is 120 and the fragrance 48. THAT ORDERING SURPRISES PEOPLE, and it is why switching to a cheaper wax rarely rescues a unit cost while switching jar supplier often does. MARGIN AND MARKUP ARE DIFFERENT NUMBERS AND THIS IS WHERE PRICES GO WRONG. Sell that candle at 950 and the margin is 59.7% — the share of the selling price you keep. The markup is 148.0% — how much you added on top of the cost. Both describe the same two numbers and they diverge fast: a 50% markup is a 33% margin, and a 50% margin is a 100% markup. Quoting one while thinking of the other is the commonest pricing error among small makers, and it always errs on the side of charging too little. COST PER BURN HOUR IS THE FIGURE THAT COMPARES HONESTLY. A small expensive candle and a large cheap one cannot be compared on price, but they can on what an hour of burning costs. Divide the unit cost by the burn time and you have the number a customer is actually buying, and the one worth putting beside a competitor's. AND THE LARGEST OMISSION IS DELIBERATE BUT IT IS STILL AN OMISSION. This is a MATERIALS cost. It does not include your time, the electricity for the melter, the wax left in the pouring jug, the test candles that did not work, packaging beyond what you entered, postage, or the fees on the sale. A unit cost that ignores labour is not a cost of production, and pricing directly off it is how small makers end up working for nothing. Add a realistic hourly figure for yourself before deciding a price is healthy. There is no currency here and no built-in price list: every figure is whatever money you typed, and the numbers only mean anything if they came from your own suppliers.