Critical pricing data

I did an interesting little experiment today. Having recently ordered an entire pallet of tealight candles, I became curious about whether I'd gotten a good price. I would have guessed that buying tens of thousands at a time might get me quite the bargain. For comparison, I picked up a bag of 100 Glimma tealights from Ikea. I paid $3.99 for the Glimma bag or 4.0 cents per tealight. It turns out my pallet came in at 5.6 cents per tealight, plus I paid for shipping. Hmm. There's some room for improvement.

But what about aesthetics and performance you ask? Our tealight does look better. It's got a nice little flower design molded into the top of the candle. The Ikea candles have a plain and boring flat top. Ours also performs (marginally) better. I lit one of each on my desk at 9:00am. The Ikea one went out at around 1:00. Ours lasted about half an hour longer, snuffing itself out at 1:30. Not bad for a dinky little candle. And, unfortunately, nobody will really care that our candle lasts a few minutes longer.

Maybe I can get a deal from Ikea if I buy a pallet from them. 3 cents each?