The five products

Soap base, dye blocks and wick

On this page9

Soap base Which is worth telling the customer Dye blocks Wick supply The archetype Clear matters for these three Wide mouth is not optional And weight is how they are sold References

Dry, bulky and bought by people who want to see what they are buying.

Soap base

Melt and pour base, sold in blocks or cubes. It is the entry point for most new makers and it carries the composition question the soap exemption turns on, because many bases contain synthetic detergents.

Which is worth telling the customer

A maker using a detergent-containing base and labelling the result simply as soap may be outside the exemption on the composition condition alone. That is useful information and almost nobody supplies it.

Dye blocks

Solid colorant for melt and pour and for candles. The same approval questions as mica apply and the answers are usually narrower, which is why the identity of the colorant matters more here than the colour name.

Wick supply

Not a cosmetic ingredient at all and not a colorant. It is hardware, bought by size and by burn characteristic, and it belongs in this property because the same customer buys it on the same order.

The archetype

Small dry parts, 15 to 500 mL, wide mouth so fingers get in, clear so the contents are visible, scooped. That describes all three well.

Clear matters for these three

A customer choosing a dye block or a wick size wants to see it. Of the 812 containers here the clear PET jars are the obvious home for this half of the range.

Wide mouth is not optional

A block of base or a bundle of wicks does not go through a narrow neck. 89-400 at 161 and 70-400 at 122 are where this part of the shelf lives.

And weight is how they are sold

Base by the pound, wick by the count, dye by the gram. Matching the container to the unit of sale rather than to a volume is what makes a range feel considered.

References

21 CFR 701.20, the soap exemption. A product is excluded from the definition of a cosmetic only where "the bulk of the nonvolatile matter in the product consists of an alkali salt of fatty acids and the detergent properties of the article are due to the alkali-fatty acid compounds" AND "the product is labeled, sold, and represented only as soap". A product that fails either condition is a cosmetic and carries cosmetic labeling. law.cornell.edu

The Davis Pack Supply catalog, measured 18 October 2026. The soap and candle supply shelf is 1,361 rows: 812 containers and 549 closures, the largest in the library, derived from three archetypes across five leaves. 482 PET, 159 HDPE, 100 glass and 71 PP, from 15 to 2,000 mL with a median of 225. The closures include 13 spice caps, which is the sifter fitment a jar of mica needs.

Written from 21 CFR 73.2496 and 701.20, and from the catalog as it stood on 18 October 2026. Whether a given color additive is approved for a given use is a question about that additive and that use, and the answer is in the regulation rather than in a supplier description; nothing here substitutes for checking it.