# Wholesale pricing



## Anita Martin (Dec 26, 2007)

I'm working with a business advisor, free help, but very helpful, and one of the things she wants me to do is start peddling soap to a list of businesses we created, but first I have had to work on drastically increasing my inventory. I've also had to come up with what it costs to make each soap, although I think I am just going to go with an average, trying to keep it around a dollar per 6 oz bar. Since I sometimes change things up from batch to batch, depending on price of oils or if I have shea on hand or whatever, up until now, it has always varied a bit. 

I've always sold my soaps for $5 a bar until I moved into a new location that gets 20 percent of my sales plus a $40 per month booth rental fee, and then I moved my soaps up to $5.50. I still feel like I can sell for $5 a bar at craft fairs and festivals and come out pretty good, but when it comes to deciding what to charge for wholesale, I am stumped. 

I don't want to make soap for free, but don't want to price myself out of a potential large customer either. Currently I am at 3.75 per 6 oz bar for wholesale....which means I make somewhere around $2 a bar. I'm still small potatoes so this doesn't seem like much to me, but I know if I get some larger orders, it won't seem so bad. 

Just wondering how some of you work out your wholesale costs?


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

I had no idea so I hired a gal to do my taxes...she went over everything, did this spread sheet and told me to wholesale my 6 ounce bars for $4.00 which was an increase of 50cents over what I had been...nobody batted an eye on the price increase. Is that $1 a bar cost, paying all you labor? Vicki


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## jdranch (Jan 31, 2010)

In the wholesaling webinar I did this past week, the instructor said your wholesale should be double your cost and your retail should be double your wholesale. She also said your cost should include your labor. Just passing on what she said.


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

I would hope your wholesale is more than double your costs...and I am pretty sure I don't know anyone who can get double wholesale for their retail on soap, not even my stores sell my soap for that. Now if your costs don't include everything...nope not even then  Maybe PJ will chime in. V


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## nightskyfarm (Sep 7, 2009)

My wholesale is $3.75 a bar and my retail is $6.00. This is what I suggest to my wholesale customers, but what they charge in the end is their business as long as it is not below my retail.


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## Faye Farms (Sep 14, 2009)

I carry a bit smaller bars than most people (3 oz). I wholesale for $2.10 a bar. I based all my costs on my most expensive soap (patchouli or lavender EO's). My stores sell them for $4.20. I am selling my retail bars for $4.00 a bar this year at market.


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## a4patch (Oct 7, 2009)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7151208/Soap-Candle%20Calculator%20%283%29.xls

This is what I use. The candle one is one my sister Hollis made for me. She is a wiz at these things. The soap one is not my form. I did get it form somewhere. I do not remember where got it. I think the first one is the original and the second tab is our version. I am not really sure.

I did delete my recipe out of the spreadsheet.

1. save a copy in case this one gets messed up.
2. enter your own sources and price per oz. (you will have to recalculate and add in shipping costs)
3. Be careful about deleting things. it is better to set the amount at ZERO than to delete (especially if you are not proficient at Excel)

If someone wants to make this a sticky they have my permission.

PSD


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## Anita Martin (Dec 26, 2007)

My price per bar does not include my labor. Before I lost my job I was making $20 an hour and doing horses, not counting driving, I make over a hundred an hour....so paying myself $10 an hour hurts! LOL. Just kidding, yes I do know I need to add that in. Also, after re-figuring my average for the new prices I'm paying for fragrance, it is certainly more than the $1 bar an average I had come up with. Most of the fragrance I had on hand and have just finished up using I got on coops and can no longer get those prices.  

I feel comfortable with a $4 a bar wholesale. I used to do $3.50 and then went to $3.75 and after looking really close at what it costs to make, I can see that I needed to go up. I was just afraid that retailers might not pay over a certain price....mass produced being so cheap....

I've started writing the cost of every item I have on hand from packaging to oils etc. on the label of the thing, so if I don't use it right away, I don't have to riffle through stacks of invoices to see what I need to add on for something, such as muslin bags, fragrance, labels, etc, and that price includes shipping too. I have a horrible memory and can easily get myself off-track with spending and such. I remember I have to milk goats and feed horses twice a day. Once a day I cook. Everything else is written in my day planner or does not get done.


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## Jenny M (Nov 21, 2009)

It cost me $1.50 to $1.75 to make a bar of soap. That includes labels, bags, freight - everything but my labor. I just can't get a handle on that since I'm going from one chore to another thru the day & just get soap & other items made as I can. I never get to spend more than an hour at a time in the soap room.

I wholesale for $3.50 per 6.5 oz bar & without exception all my stores double that. How much do your stores mark up? Maybe it's because I'm selling in a tourist area. But I worked for a lot of years in retail & I know a standard mark up is 30% to 40% max. I used to sell to the Marriott hotel gift shop in Page AZ & they marked my soap up to $8. It pissed me off & I gave them up - they didn't sell that much any way. No wonder.

I guess it's just what region you're in & what the customer base is.


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## Anita Martin (Dec 26, 2007)

I've got the soap making down to where it takes me only about an hour max to make 2 or 3 batches of soap, which for me is 50-75 bars. I can probably do one more once I get all my oils pre-measured into buckets. It's the label-making, wrapping, traveling to markets, sitting at markets not making anything that gets to me and makes it seem like a waste of time and I figure by doing it the way I've been doing it, I probably make about 10 cents an hour.  Since I'm in the expanding phase I figure I've got to put in a lot of free over-time for a while so that's the way I'm looking at it. Re-doing my labels so they are all the same, or at least the various groups of "types" are the same will save me a load of time, and getting together an order and even shipping it off will certainly take less time than driving an hour both ways to a market two times a week to only make $100 a month.  Lets see, I think I'm in the whole on that one. Well, you can see why I had to seek business advice....makes me just wanna keep trimming horses, but I'm getting too old for a whole lot more of that Soaping is easier on my back and even milking goats aint all that bad for an old lady.


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## jdranch (Jan 31, 2010)

I recently learned (in a not so fun way) that there isn't an industry standard for anything wholesale- wholesale pricing, wholesale *catalogs*, even soap sizes. It seems everyone puts their own spin on their stuff. Not complaining, I think it is good to be different. I just thought there was a certain way/ a right way/ a way that everyone does it- and there really isn't, imo.


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## Anita Martin (Dec 26, 2007)

Jennifer, that's kind of what I was thinking.


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