Wholesale Price Calculator
Selling wholesale means two prices that have to coexist: one that pays you and one that leaves your stockist enough to bother. Getting the relationship wrong damages both.
Result
$0.00
Where the money goes
Saving keeps your figures on this device only — nothing is sent anywhere.
Start from the true unit cost
The most common wholesale mistake is calculating from materials alone. Your unit cost is materials plus your labour plus a share of overhead — and labour is the line handmade sellers routinely set to zero, which is how a wholesale order becomes a month of unpaid work.
With the defaults: $6.20 of materials, 18 minutes at $22 an hour ($6.60), and $1.40 of overhead gives a true unit cost of $14.20. Anyone pricing from the $6.20 figure will happily accept a wholesale price that loses money on every unit shipped.
The two-price relationship
Wholesale pricing has a structural constraint that direct selling does not: the retailer needs room to make their own margin, and the retail price they set becomes the price your own customers see. The chain works in one direction only:
True unit cost → your wholesale price → the retailer's retail price
Retailers commonly look for roughly a doubling of the wholesale price. If your wholesale price is $26, expect around $57 on the shelf — and that has to be a price the market accepts. If it is not, the problem is your cost base, not the retailer's expectation, and no amount of negotiating fixes it.
Never undercut your own stockists
This is the rule that ends wholesale relationships. If a shop sells your product at $57 and your own site sells it at $45, you have made their stock unsellable and they will not reorder. Your direct price should sit at or near the recommended retail price.
Which is where the pleasant surprise lives: selling direct at RRP, you keep the full retail price minus fees rather than the wholesale price. The calculator shows both margins side by side, and direct is usually much the better margin. Wholesale is not a better deal per unit — it is volume, predictability, and someone else doing the selling.
Is the wholesale order worth taking?
Multiply the per-unit wholesale margin by the minimum order quantity and weigh it against the work. A 12-unit order at $11 margin is $132 for what may be several days of production. That can be excellent — guaranteed money, no marketing, no customer service, and a shop displaying your product to people who have never heard of you. It can also be a bad trade if it crowds out direct sales at twice the margin during your busiest month. Capacity is the deciding factor, not the margin percentage.
Questions
How do I calculate a wholesale price?
Start from true unit cost — materials plus labour at a real hourly rate plus a share of overhead — then apply the margin you need to keep. Wholesale price = unit cost ÷ (1 − your margin). The output only means something if labour is in the cost; leaving it out is what makes wholesale orders unprofitable.
What margin should I keep on wholesale?
Enough that the order is worth the production time, judged against what you would make selling those units direct. Since direct selling at RRP usually earns considerably more per unit, wholesale needs to justify itself on volume, predictability and reach rather than per-unit margin.
Can I sell cheaper on my own website than my stockists do?
You can, and it is the fastest way to lose them. A retailer who finds the maker undercutting them stops reordering, because their stock has become unsellable. Price your direct sales at or near the recommended retail price — you keep more per unit that way anyway, since you are earning the retail price minus fees rather than the wholesale price.