How BOM-Based Stock Calculation Tripled Sellable Inventory for a Candle Manufacturer

A manufacturer based in Grasse, France, producing candle-making components -- primarily scented wax. They sell through 4 e-commerce sites, and their products share a common base: roughly 99% base wax with 1% fragrance oil determining the final variant (vanilla, exotic, berry, etc.). The challenge is that the same raw material can become any variant.

The Challenge

Traditional inventory management forced them into an impossible situation. With 1 tonne of base wax in stock, they had to decide in advance how much to allocate to each scent: 300kg for vanilla, 300kg for exotic, 300kg for berry, and 100kg for another variant. If vanilla sold out, they showed "out of stock" on their website even though they had 700kg of wax that could be turned into vanilla within hours. They also had no system for managing manufacturing orders -- tracking when to fabricate, how much raw material to consume, and when to trigger production based on incoming orders.

The Solution

We designed a solution combining standard myFulfillment features with a custom stock calculation engine.

Bill of Materials based virtual stock: the system sells manufactured product capacity from raw components, not just on-hand finished goods. Since 99% of each product is the same base wax, 1 tonne of wax creates 1 tonne of sellable capacity for every scent variant simultaneously.

The Results

The sellable stock per variant tripled overnight -- from 300kg to 1,000kg for each scent variant. This directly translates to fewer stockouts, more sales, and better customer experience across all 4 sites. Manufacturing orders are now triggered automatically based on incoming demand rather than manual forecasting. The system is currently being deployed and represents a fundamentally new approach to inventory management for manufacturing-retail businesses.