Wholesale Pricing Calculator

How wholesale pricing works

Wholesale means selling in bulk to a shop that resells your product. You give up some margin per unit in exchange for volume and someone else doing the selling. The order matters: total your true cost per unit first, add any freight you're paying spread across the order, then divide by one minus the margin you need.

Dividing rather than multiplying is the part most people get wrong. Adding 35% to your cost does not give you a 35% margin, because margin is measured against the price you charge, not the cost you paid.

Wholesale price versus retail price

Your wholesale price is what a stockist pays you. The suggested retail price is what their customer pays, calculated so the shop earns the margin it needs. Most categories settle near a keystone markup — retail is roughly double wholesale, which is a 50% retail margin.

Keep your own direct-to-customer price at or near the suggested retail price. Undercutting your stockists is the fastest way to lose them.

Why minimum order quantity matters

A minimum order quantity (MOQ) is the smallest order you'll accept. It exists because the fixed work around an order — packing, invoicing, a production run setup, freight — barely changes whether you ship 10 units or 100.

• Small orders make your shipping allocation per unit painfully high.
• A sensible MOQ keeps that allocation to a few cents rather than a few dollars.
• Try changing the order quantity in the calculator to see exactly where your per-unit profit stops being worth the effort.

A worked example

Say a unit costs $6.00 in product, $1.25 in packaging, $3.00 in labor, $1.50 in overhead and $0.50 in other costs — $12.25 per unit. You ship a 50-unit order and pay $75 in freight, which adds $1.50 per unit, so the final cost is $13.75.

At a 35% wholesale margin, your wholesale price is about $21.15, giving you roughly $7.40 of profit per unit and about $370 on the order, with $1,057 of order revenue. With a 50% retailer margin, the suggested retail price is around $42.31. Load the sample numbers above to see it live.

Common wholesale-pricing mistakes

• Simply halving your retail price without checking it still covers your costs.
• Forgetting freight you agreed to pay on the order.
• Leaving your own labor and overhead out of the unit cost.
• Accepting tiny orders with no minimum order quantity.
• Setting a retail price so low the shop can't make its margin.
• Selling direct below your stockists' shelf price.

Frequently asked questions