How does Ollivander decide what kind of wand to make?

Question

For every wizard there's a wand: short, long, flexible, rigid, filled with bits of unicorn, phoenix and dragon (referring to the wands here, not the wizards and their diets); one wizard, one wand. Going by a variety of sources (pictures, the movies) Ollivander sells a staggering amount of wands of all variations: he's got hundreds, if not thousands of them on his shelves, each of them waiting patiently for their owner. Given all the variables in wand making there are 19.152 possible different wands, discounting physical differences.

But I wonder how he choses what kind of wand to make. Does he just one day go "I feel like making a 12" springy hawthorn wand with a dragon heartstring core" and make one of those? Does he look at his stock to determine what he's running short on and fill the gaps? Is it because Wandlore works in mysterious ways? Or is it something that has just not been mentioned?

Answer 1

The canon quote is that Ollivander's store contains:

thousands of narrow boxes piled neatly right up to the ceiling.

It's vanishingly unlikely that this is his entire stock, nor that every wand is on display. Given that there are only 19,000 potential combinations of wands, it's not an unreasonable guess that he simply has one of each kind that are common and sufficient materials to make any kinds that are uncommon.

Given how dusty the store is, it seems probable that he only sells a few wands each day and is presumably able to replenish his stock at much the same rate, relying on his reputation for producing the highest quality (and most expensive) wands to keep him in business rather than producing bulk.

Answer 2

Based on the fact that Ollivander says (quote from movie as I don't have the book):

I remember every wand I've ever sold, Mr. Potter. It so happens that the phoenix whose tailfeather resides in your wand gave another feather... just one other. It is curious that you should be destined for this wand when its brother gave you that scar.

... I always thought that Ollivander created wands as sufficiently magical materials become available to him: an evening shipment containing two of Fawkes' feathers resulted in two wands, which would eventually choose the two most famous wizards in the land. As Richard pointed out, Ollivander has dozens of thousands of wands in his inventory and probably only needs to replenish them pretty slowly.

Answer 3

Certain wands are more common than others. For example, in the Pottermore wand-wood section linked here, the section on Acacia Wood states:

"This sensitivity renders them difficult to place, and I keep only a small stock for those witches or wizards of sufficient subtlety."

So based on the rarity of this wand wood, Ollivander keeps a small stock of Acacia wands and presumably remakes them as they are sold. This would go for any wand wood. A wood that is more common, such as, according to Wand Popularity by JKR, the Sycamore wand is the most common, and so Ollivander probably keeps a larger stock of Sycamore, and replaces them as they are sold.

As first-year Hogwarts Students usually come to get their wands in August, the rest of the year would be spent selling new wands or repairing old ones, or collecting supplies and replenishing his stock, as he says (in the wand wood section):

"It takes years of experience to tell which ones have the gift, although the job is made easier if Bowtruckles are found nesting in the leaves, as they never inhabit mundane trees."

Blockquote

And in Goblet of Fire, as Ollivander examines Cedric Diggory's wand, he states,

"The unicorn in your wand comes from a particularly fine male unicorn. Yes, I remember it well. It almost killed me after I plucked his tail."

This shows that you need expertise to track down unicorns and pluck their tails, which is also probably what he does, collect wood and cores, during his months of downtime after August.

So, overall, he probably uses whatever supplies he has, and remakes whatever he has sold, and his stock of wands is based on the popularity of the wand.