pricing caps

[Joy]

Hi Everyone, I love all of the advice on this site. I am not sure how to price caps. I often get orders for 5 doz. or more. I struggle with the quote every time. I need to decide on a pricing scale, so that there's no decision to be made with every order. When I first started someone told me to make at least $5.oo profit per cap on orders by the doz. Not sure if this is where I need to be. I charge extra for the back.
I would appreciate it if some of you guys would advise.
Thanks Joy

[signman]

Years ago (and I think about 12-15) when I setup my FileMaker Pro pricing pages, I sat down with a half dozen commercial ad specialty suppliers that did shirts. Went over their pricing schedules, did some basic math, and figured out what the average 'mark up' was for any given quantity for all of them. Took those 'percentage markup' figure and built it into my own pricing page. It's held up for that long-and usually, I am right in the ballpark for someone 'shopping around' to compare prices.
Without going into a long drawn out thing-this is what we 'basically' do.
Working with the SINGLE price of an item from Sanmar (NOT the case price-explain that later) I multiply this 'cost' with the following percentage...under 12- 200%, up to 36, 185 %, up to 72, 165%, 144, 150%, 288 and over, 125%.
This is my 'retail' price that the customer sees BEFORE we add screening, decal, or embroidery.
My 'print' charge or thread count charge also follows this percentage...so as they buy more, it costs less to embellish the item.
Case price versus 'single' price...why? Although we get case price no matter what quantity I order-I have to 'cover my butt' if I need a substitute item from a different supplier than Sanmar...so if I base all my pricing on the 'single' price-my cost is covered without trying to add in a higher price somewhere. Also, this gives me some bargaining room-I always know that my prices I show the customer have 17.5% 'wiggle' room on actual cost. So if I have to discount 10% or so to 'meet' someone else's price-I'm not losing any money!
Now, remember=ALWAYS CHARGE FOR FREIGHT! Unless YOU get free freight, the CUSTOMER should pay for incoming freight! If someone orders 3 doz hats for you-that won't qualify for free freight from Sanmar-so YOU get stuck paying maybe $20 for freight. Why should you? THEY ordered them and everyone else is going to charge them!
I've had people order 3 or 4 special shirts-just had to order 7 kids shirt for one client-shirts cost me $14.70, the shipping was $12!!! Doubled the cost of the shirts-and she paid the freight!
No way I was going to eat it...
Roland

[Joy]

Roland,
Thanks for the detailed explanation. This is just the type of answer I was hoping for. What do you charge for lettering on the back of the cap? The standard around here is $1 or $2 It has to be re-hooped, and this takes time not much money there but feel like I already made a profit on the cap.
about the freight, how do you invoice this charge? How do you charge for freight when. you are making a combined order.
Also do you place each order as you get them or do you try to combine them.
Although I have been in this business for over 2 years, I have just been winging it on a lot of things. Now I am at the point that I really need to get professional and better organized on some of this stuff
Thanks Joy

[signman]

When possible, we combine orders for the week or so and call it all in at once. I think Sanmar is free freight for $150, white tees don't count. If I have only small orders but total is over $100, we'll add in a couple good tote bags or something that we know we can 'retail' around christmas-or some of the good 'emergency' blankets, etc. to make up enough for free freight. We tell the customers up front-if we know we have other orders coming in and they can wait-they also get the free freight. If they are in a rush-they pay the freight!
Most of them are willing to wait!
Hat backs-I've only done a couple of times-and I know we had a big 200 piece order and had someone else do them-and our WHOLESALE cost was $1.85 or so-so charging $1 or $2 you are losing money just in the time spent hooping!
Don't give things away-make sure you make money to cover your time and things like backing, thread, etc.
Roland

[Body Cover]

Sorry to butt in, but we have found that the easiest way to guess-timate shipping charges in this day and age, is to start keeping track of orders that are on particular style. Say you order 56 T-shirts then you take the shipping charges and cod fees if any and whatever you may be getting charged as a handling or processing fee, and divide it by the amount of shirts received. Soon you will start to see a common pattern such as if I order a T-shirt from vendor X it will cost and additional $.28 per shirt for shipping and maybe sweatshirts cost you $.36 each
(Completely random and made up pricing) but soon as you figure your pricing you can make sure that you know your cost plus shipping and then mark it up whatever percentage beyond that and be confident your costs are covered. soon you'll realize most polo shirts will be slightly more than t's and not as much as sweats, and so on...
This way of caculating takes longer at first but soon you realize it's based on actual costs and not guesses of what you think your going to pay.
Don't forget to figure some new orders every so often to make sure your in the right ballpark still. And if you get free freight for bigger orders keep the money and tell yourself that it helps counteract the time when you didn't figure enough freight for the job. and made less. In the end the goal is to be somewher in the middle, (we hope)


Ron

[signman]

Hi Ron...I think I had figured it out like you say long before we went to the pricing 'page's I use-and seems to me it was 50¢ per tee, 75¢ for polos, 1.25¢ for sweats...heavier the item, fewer per box. I think a 72 piece case of teeshirts is around $28 UPS per case...39¢ not counting COD fee, etc.
But having the free freight option makes it a lot easier. ANYTIME we have to pay for next day, 2 day, or 3 day shipping because the customer didn't give enough lead time-we tell them all freight charges are HIS charges. That can really add up!
It depends a lot on pricing as to what type of 'invoice' form you have, and if you have enough orders every week or two to justify the 'free freight'. Also if you want to 'pass along' the free freight idea to customers. It's also one way to get them to pay in full with the order-offer 'free freight' for prepaid orders.
Also, ALWAYS get a big deposit up front until you KNOW the customer and if they pay promptly or make you wait or make you chase them for the money. We absolutely never take a new customer's order without a deposit or full payment...having been stiffed 3 times over 15 years (fortunately we had never printed the orders...something had made me drag my feet long enough to find out they weren't going to pay timely-one big order-his deposit check bounced AFTER we ordered the goods)
In this lovely economy, it is not a good idea to be your customers' 'financier'...it's YOUR money tied up. Make sure you get paid!