Candle & Home Fragrance: POAS, COGS and margin benchmarks
Candles are heavy, fragile and can be sold one at a time, and gift buying shapes the year. Bath & Body Works, a large home-fragrance retailer, reports that its fourth quarter typically accounts for approximately 40% of its net sales. Glass jars cost more to ship than their price suggests, broken candles cost a second delivery, and basket size changes the margin on every order, none of which ROAS can see. The pages below cover what a healthy return looks like, what belongs in a candle brand's cost of goods, and how to scale spend around the holiday peak.
The questions, with sourced numbers
- What's a healthy POAS?
What POAS candle and home fragrance stores need on Google Ads when heavy glass, breakage and low order values eat into margin on every shipment.
3.48Median Google Ads ROAS - What counts as COGS?
Wax, fragrance oil, vessels, wicks, protective packaging and breakage allowance: which candle costs belong in COGS when measuring POAS on Google Ads.
56.3%Cost of goods, buying & occupancy (one company) - How do you scale spend profitably?
How to scale Google Ads for a candle brand on profit: bundle past the free-shipping line, build for the holiday peak, and scale proven scents.
About 40%Bath & Body Works' annual sales made in Q4
Background reading
- What Is POAS (Profit on Ad Spend)? Full Definition
- ROAS vs POAS: Which Metric Should You Actually Use?
- ROAS vs POAS: The Metric Killing Your Shopify Profits
- How to Calculate Break-Even ROAS (With a Worked Example)
- Shopify COGS Setup: How to Track Cost of Goods Sold
- Google Ads for Shopify: The Complete Profitability Guide
- Wasted Ad Spend in Google Ads: How to Find and Fix It