Wholesale pricing

[Juli in Kona]

i have a customer, a retail store, that is starting to ask me to supply apparel/embroidery. I am sort of at loss as to what to charge him.

So, if I pay $10 + an avg of $2 frt per item and put on a $3 embroidery (really small design and extremely easy to do) how much do you think I can charge and not loose him. He orders 100 at a time for everything.

Juli in Kona

[Steve]

I do wholesale at 50 cents per thousand stitches. Minimum $2 each piece to compensate for any downtime if it is less than 4000 stitches. Plus the cost of the item.

[signman]

Always, always add a mark up on your goods...irregardless of how big an order it is...because if you screw up ONE piece, say $10.00 for a polo-then if you are NOT making any markup at all and only getting your embroidery cost...then you have pretty much given away about 8 shirts for nothing. ($10 + $2 freight, 8 shirts for only $3=$24, minus about $12 to cover your thread, backing, time...covers 1 screwed up shirt) Do that a couple times and you are not in business to make money. Even WHOLESALE you should be getting at least 15% over the cost of goods.
Realistically...after doing the figuring over many years (okay, decades) of screenprinting and now embroidery-you should 'bill' invoices enough to generate $50 PER HOUR you are running the machine. At $1 per thousand, 1000 spm, that's $60 an hour if you get that much, but you should figure 'profit per item markup' to come up to that $50.
I have links to prices that 'commercial embroidery' shops with large number of 'heads' and what they charge...don't give away your time!

[Impressive Threads]

I charge a 25% markup on the garment, then start my embroidery price at $3.50 for up to 3000 stitches. I go up 50 cents for each 1000 stitches above 3000. I also do work for a retail store and so far they have not blinked twice at this pricing.

Cindy in Phoenix

[Body Cover]

Hi Juli,
My suggestion is to stop in and see what he is charging retail for this item,
most gift shops or specialty places will at least want to be able to keystone the item, which is double the price they paid, if they are retailing for $39.95 then you can figure you should be able to charge around $20 since your into it for around $15 this may be doable on some orders, but if he is selling them at $20 retail or even $30 then I doubt he'll want to pay, more than $15. the big draw to a place using a big company is the pricing, they may take that same item with some different wording and sell it to 20 or 30 other places around the world, then they are buying thousands at a time and embroidering thousands at a time and they keep the costs down since they are selling thousands all over. but for us little guys we have to sell them on the idea of unique and custom, you won't find your item in the store down the street or across town, this way it hopefully can account for the higher pricing,
but it is difficult to work on the small margins retailers want when they are comparing you to bigger companies that are spread around selling the same ideas and garments all over.
Bottom line is if ordering 100 at a time, see if you can negotiate better pricing from your supplier. it never hurts to ask... and decide what the least amount you can live with is,
it doesn't pay to work your butt off and only make a small amount of money when you can make bigger profits and work easier on the custom stuff. It really is a judgment call on your part I think. Good Luck!

Ron

[Gabi Kat]

My whole sale accounts provide the blanks I just do the sewing at wholesale. They understand that should a blank be deamaged by the sewing process it is their loss not mine. In some cases, depending on how large the sew is they pay for the sewing on the damaged blank as well.
You can also check out some of the contract embroiders on line, many of them post their price lists.
Gabi in Tuscon