Free tool
How many units can you cure and ship before the deadline
Put in your batch size, your finishing minutes and your cure rule, and see how many units your studio can honestly promise before the last shipping day.
Free tool, no sign up
True cost per candle or bar, and your wholesale floor
Enter what goes into one finished unit and see the cost that survives cure loss, seconds and your own labor, plus the lowest wholesale price that still leaves room.
Most makers price from materials alone, which is why a stockist order can feel busy and pay nothing. The units you set aside for sinkholes, wet spots, frosting, a lopsided wick or a bar that came out soft are paid for by the units you sell, and your hours at the bench are a real cost even when you never invoice them.
This calculator loads all of that into one figure, then shows the wholesale floor at a two times multiple, which is the point where a shop can double it to retail without your work being sold below cost. If your current wholesale sheet sits under that line, the fix is either a lighter fragrance load, a cheaper vessel, a faster finishing routine or a higher price.
Your result
Materials per unit
$4.57
Everything physical that leaves the studio inside one finished unit.
Materials plus your time
$6.40
The same unit with your bench hours priced in at your own rate.
True cost per sellable unit
$6.81
Loaded with the seconds and scrap that the sellable units have to carry.
Wholesale floor per unit
$13.62
The lowest wholesale price that leaves a shop room to double it at retail.
Round the wholesale floor up to the nearest dollar before you send a line sheet, because freight and broken jars are not in this number.
Why rejected units belong in the price
Pour forty eight tins and set three aside for wet spots and a crooked wick, and you did not make forty eight units. You made forty five sellable ones plus three you will sell as seconds at a market or give to a stockist as testers. The wax, the fragrance and the hour you spent are already spent on all forty eight.
A six percent set aside rate sounds small and moves the true cost by more than most makers expect, especially on a low margin tin. If you track it on the batch record for a season you will find it is not random. It clusters around a particular vessel, a particular fragrance that discolors or the batches you poured late on a Thursday.
Setting your own labor rate honestly
The usual instinct is to leave labor out because you are the owner and the time is free. It is not free, and pricing as though it is means every wholesale order quietly buys your evenings. Put in the hourly rate you would have to pay a careful person to wick, pour, trim, label and pack without you supervising.
If that number makes your wholesale floor uncomfortable, that is useful information rather than a reason to lower it. The response is usually to cut minutes per unit, not the rate. Batching label printing, pouring in bigger melts and finishing a whole rack in one sitting all pull minutes out of the same product.
Questions about this calculator
How do I turn a bulk wax price into a per unit figure?
Take your delivered cost per pound, including shipping, and multiply by the pounds each unit holds. A nine ounce tin holding about half a pound of soy at three dollars forty a pound is around a dollar seventy. Use delivered cost, because freight on a fifty pound case is real money.
Should cure loss be counted for soap?
Yes, though it shows up as weight rather than units. A cold process bar loses water over a four week cure, so a bar poured at five ounces may label at four and a half. Price against the cured weight you actually sell and use the reject field only for bars you cannot sell.
Is a two times multiple the right wholesale floor?
It is the common floor in this trade because shops usually double wholesale to reach retail. Studios with strong brands and steady stockists often price above it. Treat the figure here as the line below which a wholesale order is costing you money rather than making it.
More free tools and working documents
Working document
The batch record and label release checklist
Four stages, twenty checks, covering everything that has to be captured between opening a wax carton and handing a labeled unit to a customer.
That number, taken from your own pours
The figure above is only as sound as the wax price, fragrance load and reject estimate you fed it. Once every carton and bottle is recorded against a batch, the same calculation runs off real scale weights and the units you actually set aside. Ask for a demo and see the version that recalculates itself the morning after each pour.