Pricing: How Much is Too Much?

What’s the price of pricing too high or low? Because on the one hand, you want to charge low enough that people won’t look at your price and go, “pssh I could use that on beer instead.”

On the other hand, you don’t want to charge $5 a t-shirt and end up making negative moneys. Much like internship experience, you can’t pay for food with negative moneys.

You could risk it and price too high or low, but at what cost – literally? I talked to Threadless’s Head of Product and he gave me some advice to give to you when it comes to pricing.

Go shopping

Well, kinda. Look at what other retailers who might have a similar audience are charging and try to be in that range. Part of pricing is the market – getting a feel for what other companies catering towards your niche are pricing their items at.

it can all be relative

Audience: looking at what your audience is looking for design-wise is one thing, but it can also help determine pricing. Are your designs more geared towards a young, pop-culture-conscious audience who may not have money to blow on expensive designs? Or are your designs geared more towards an urban, late 20-something crowd who can maybe afford to spend a little more on a tee to flaunt their style?

Volume: One thing to keep in mind when pricing is the fact that a higher price doesn’t necessarily mean a higher profit. Selling a higher volume of a product priced around, say, $17, will yield more profit than selling just a few of a product priced on the higher, $27ish end. Sometimes it’s about selling more of a lower priced product than just a couple of a higher priced product.

method of printing

The way your design is printed could also effect pricing. Printing methods like sublimation and all-over designs vs DTG prints can cost a little more, so you can get away with raising the price a bit.

spend money to make money (in moderation)

Special cases like promotions and sales are more about getting your product out there and publicity rather than actual profit. If you’re making tees for just yourself, making a bunch to give out for free to a group, etc., it’s about getting the word out there.

Material

We talked about tri-blends in our post “WTF is a Tri-blend?” and said that a tri-blend is kind of like a fancy t-shirt because it’s a lot softer. I wouldn’t charge a WHOLE lot more for tri-blend vs normal t-shirt, but on Threadless.com, for instance, there’s a $5 difference between regular cotton tees and tri-blends.

Price Ranges

Here’s a handy list of products and what price ranges are high vs low for them. This list along with the above advice should make narrowing down that Goldilocks pricing a little bit easier.

PRICING SCALE

AS_PricingChart

Other helpful links: 

Psychological Pricing is Your Ticket to Selling More” – Shopify

9 Strategies for Profitably Pricing Your Retail Products” – Shopify

How to Price Your Garment: 4 Things to Remember” – Maker’s Row

.     .     .

We’re an artist community built on the power of helping each other succeed — if you’re reading this and have tips of your own to share, please do so in the comments! Thank you!

 

Related Posts