How to Price Your Clothing Brand's Products
By The Velocity Wear Team
Price from your landed cost per piece, not from what competitors charge. Add up the garment, decoration, delivery and packaging to get a true unit cost, then work out what margin you need after payment fees, returns and marketing — most new brands discover their first instinct was well below what the business actually requires.
Work Out Your True Unit Cost
The number people usually quote is the price they paid per garment. That is not your cost. Your cost is everything you spent to have a saleable item in your hand, divided by the number of saleable items. That includes the blank and the decoration, but also inbound delivery, any packaging or labelling you add, and — critically — the cost of stock you cannot sell because it is in a size nobody wanted.
The free instant price calculator gives you live pricing on garment, method and quantity, which is your starting figure. Add your own downstream costs to it before you do anything else.
The Costs New Brands Forget
These are the ones that quietly consume margin.
- Payment processing fees on every sale, which apply to the full transaction including the shipping you charged.
- Outbound shipping and packaging, especially if you offer free delivery — that cost has not disappeared, it has moved into your margin.
- Returns and exchanges, which cost you the return postage, the reshipping, and sometimes the item.
- Unsold stock. If you order 100 and sell 80, your real cost per sold piece is your total spend divided by 80, not by 100.
Margin Versus Markup
These get confused constantly and the difference is large. Markup is how much you add to cost; margin is what proportion of the selling price is profit. A garment costing £10 sold at £20 is a 100% markup but a 50% margin. Retail businesses generally think in margin, because that is what has to cover every other cost in the business. If you are working in markup and assuming it means the same thing, you will consistently underestimate what you need.
“"Your margin is not profit. It is the money that has to pay for everything that is not the product."”
Why Underpricing Is So Common
New brand owners price low out of nervousness — the fear that nobody will pay more. But a low price creates its own problems. It signals lower quality to the customer, it leaves nothing to fund marketing, and it makes discounting impossible because there is no room. It also anchors your customers: raising prices later on the same product is far harder than starting at the right level. If your product genuinely is well made, the price should say so.
How Quantity Changes the Maths
Bulk discounts reach up to around 40% as quantities rise, which means your unit cost is not fixed — it is a function of how much you order. That creates a real strategic decision. Ordering more lowers your cost per piece and improves margin, but ties up cash and risks unsold stock. Ordering less protects cash but leaves your margin thinner. The 20-piece minimum with mixed sizes exists precisely so you can test at low risk before committing to the quantity that improves your economics.
A Sensible Approach
Start with a small run to validate the design and the fit of your size spread. Track what actually sells rather than what you expected to sell. Then reorder the proven pieces at a quantity that meaningfully improves your unit cost, and price with enough margin to fund the next order without needing external money. That sequence is slower than launching big, and it is how most labels survive their first year.
Model your quantities and specifications in the free instant price calculator before setting prices, and preview designs in the free Design Studio so you are not paying for a proofing mistake.