Embroidery pricing guide
Charge enough to replace the garment and pay yourself.
A clear embroidery price covers every cost, survives mistakes, and leaves a deliberate profit.
Run the numbers first
Use the calculator beside this guide to price one real order with your own shop costs.
Price an orderTrue cost comes before profit
True cost is the amount the shop spends to complete the order. It includes blanks, consumables, machine ownership, labor, overhead, setup, and expected waste. It does not include profit. If a quote equals true cost, the business completed the job for free.
Material costs
Record the blank garment at its landed cost, including supplier shipping when material. Add thread, bobbin, backing, topping, needles, and packaging. Expensive or customer-supplied items need a larger risk allowance because one placement error can erase the profit from the whole order.
Machine time and capacity
A machine creates cost even when no employee is actively touching it. Financing, depreciation, maintenance, electricity, floor space, and lost capacity belong in the machine hourly rate. Estimate sewing time from real throughput rather than the machine's maximum advertised speed.
Use the embroidery stitch price calculator guide to compare per-1,000-stitch shortcuts with a cost-based floor.
Hands-on labor
Time a normal job from artwork review through packing. Include file preparation, test sewing, hooping, loading, color handling, trimming, quality control, folding, and customer communication. Your desired hourly wage is a business cost, not profit.
Setup and digitizing
Charge digitizing when a new design must be converted into an embroidery file. Charge setup when the order needs special placement, testing, thread matching, or production planning. On repeat orders, remove the parts that genuinely do not recur.
Markup and margin are different
Markup divides profit by cost. Margin divides profit by selling price. If cost is $100 and price is $150, markup is 50% but margin is 33.3%. A margin target gives a clearer picture of how much revenue remains after the job cost.
To protect a margin after selling fees, use price = cost รท (1 - margin - fees). Do not simply add the margin percentage to cost.
Quantity discounts need a reason
Quantity can reduce the setup share and improve workflow. That creates room for a lower per-piece price. The discount should come from measured efficiency, not from a customer asking for a round number. Garment cost, stitch time, and handling still grow with each piece.
Minimums protect small jobs
A one-piece order can require almost the same artwork, test sew, thread selection, and communication as a 24-piece order. Use a minimum order charge or a setup fee so small work pays for the interruption it creates.
Present the quote clearly
State the garment, decoration location, quantity, design size or stitch allowance, setup, price, turnaround, tax treatment, payment schedule, and quote expiry. Define what changes the price, especially artwork revisions, extra locations, specialty materials, rush production, and customer-supplied garments.