To price a soy candle you add up its full cost first: the wax, fragrance, wicks and jars by the batch, your time at an hourly rate, the label and box, and a share of overhead like rent and power. That's what one candle costs you. Then set the price so that, after card and selling fees, it leaves the margin you want: price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate). For a 9-ounce soy candle that costs $6.41 to make, a 70% margin after 3% fees means $23.74, rounded up to $24.00. The jar is the biggest single cost, more than the wax, and fragrance is next; swapping either changes the price more than anything else. Wholesale to shops is most often about half of retail, so the retail price has to leave room for it. In the example below, an Oʻahu candle maker prices its 9-ounce jar for markets and a gift shop.
The short version
- Full cost = wax, fragrance, wick and jar + your time + label and box + overhead.
- Price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate).
- Count your time at a real hourly rate, even if you don't pay yourself yet.
- Count the jar, wick and lid in the cost; together they're more than the wax.
- Set retail so that half of it, the wholesale price, still covers the full cost.
- Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
- TaroStack keeps wax, fragrance, wicks and jars counted and costs every batch. More below.
What goes into a candle's cost
| Part | How to count it |
|---|---|
| Wax, fragrance, wicks and jars | The batch's cost ÷ candles a batch |
| Your time | Hands-on minutes for the batch ÷ candles × your hourly rate |
| Label and box | Per candle |
| Overhead | Rent, power, tools, spread over the candles you make |
| Fees | Card and market fees as a share of the price |
Margins across a candle line are in candles profit margin, and pouring by the melter in how to make candles in bulk.
An example: a 9-ounce soy candle
Lehua Glow, the made-up candle maker on Oʻahu I use in these examples, pours 24 nine-ounce soy candles at a time:
| A batch of 24 | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Soy wax | 12.15 lb | $26.73 |
| Fragrance oil | 1.35 lb | $24.30 |
| Wicks | 24 | $6.00 |
| Jars with lids | 24 | $51.60 |
| A batch | $108.63 |
| A candle | Cost |
|---|---|
| Wax, fragrance, wicks and jars, $108.63 ÷ 24 | $4.53 |
| Time, 60 minutes for the batch at $20 an hour ÷ 24 | $0.83 |
| Label and box | $0.55 |
| Overhead | $0.50 |
| Full cost | $6.41 |
At a 70% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $6.41 ÷ 0.27 = $23.74, so $24.00. At $24.00 a candle, each leaves $16.87. It sells at markets for $26.00, which leaves $18.81, because a local scent at a Saturday market carries it. A gift shop pays $13.00, half of retail, which leaves $6.20 a candle. Selling at a market is in how to sell candles at farmers market.
Get the calculator
Download the candle price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's supplies, amounts and costs, the candles it makes, the hands-on minutes, the label and box and overhead, your hourly rate, card fees and the margin you want; the full cost, the price for your margin rounded up, and what a wholesale price and a test price leave fill in. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
The calculator prices one candle on paper. Fourteen scents with different fragrance prices, jars that went up 20 cents, and a two-wick size: each one costs something different, and the sheet only knows one.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps wax, fragrance, wicks and jars counted, and costs every batch.
Supplies in their units. Wax bought by the 50-pound case is used by the pound, fragrance by the ounce, and jars and wicks by the each.
Designs as recipes. Each candle is a recipe of its supplies, so a batch takes them off stock and is costed from what they cost, and good and rejected pieces are recorded.
Reordering. Supplies come up on a reorder list in days of cover, worked out from how fast they're used.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Supplies on hand | Count the shelf | Stock in its own units |
| What a batch cost | Prices you type | Costed from what you paid |
| Candles repoured | Not counted | Good and rejected on each batch |
| When to reorder | When it's low | Reorder list in days of cover |
Recipes, units, costing and reorder lists are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.