T-shirt pricing guide For Retail Sales

Now that you are done creating stellar t-shirt designs, it’s time to sell them to your community. But wait! How are you going to price them? Which is the right price? Will people buy them at that price? These are some of the questions which might make you skeptical while fixing a price for your t-shirts. In this guide, we will seek answers to all these questions and clarify the right selling price, which is worth the hard work you have put in.

The art of pricing your t-shirts is nothing but balancing the profit you expect per shirt with the amount your audience would be willing to pay. If you set your selling price too high, that will turn off the people who buy. The three questions you need to ask yourself before you decide on how to price a t-shirt is followed up

What are my sales goals?

The step one in determining the sales price is by evaluating the goal you want to attain from selling them. Is it the profit or selling more shirts? If you aren’t worried about the profit, keep the selling cost low and close to the base price of the t-shirt. If you are trying to make money out of it, think about the ideal dollar amount of profit per shirt you would like to make.

How much would people be willing to spend?

Considering the target audience for your campaign, you can decide how high you can set your price. The younger the audience, the lower you have to keep the selling price. If you still have trouble, survey a small set of your audience to know their opinion.

Does the base cost of the shirt align with these goals?

This is a very important question that needs to be answered. If you suddenly figure out that your base cost is much higher than you want it to be, you would need to simplify your design.

Due to the process involved in screen printing, the base cost increases if you have more colors in your design, as you print on two sides instead of one. So if your goal is to make profits with a reasonable selling price, it is wise to stick to a one-sided t-shirt design with 1-3 colors.

How to Price a T Shirt – Tips

Know what is it going to cost you

The first thing you should consider while pricing your t-shirt is how much it costs to produce them. Of, course you would want to keep it low, but that should not be at the expense of quality. A universal fact is people are always willing to pay more for quality t-shirt rather than a shirt that is fragile and rough. So, paying $1 or $2 more on the front end might enable you to charge $8 or $10 more at retail. Do not be afraid to price your t-shirt for their worth. If you’re selling a high-quality t-shirt, make sure your price says that. If you’re price it less than their worth, your buyers are going to consider them as less than their worth. Price them as they should be and let the product speak for itself.

Research the market

Taking a look at the current market for determining what your retail cost should be. Getting to know about how your competitor is pricing is a great jumping-off point. This isn’t for you to price them the same or keep it a dollar less than your competitors. But it is for you to know what other people are charging for their product when you are trying to make customers choose you.

Pricing above the market average

A fantastic way to outrun your competition is by adding more value to their shopping experience. You can do this by including gifts or personalized messages or go for high-quality visual presentations ( professional images, store design)

Pricing the same as the market

This is the safest option if you wish to cover a broader target audience and still make a profit. This will keep you in the same price league as your competitors, and you will also be able to attract the same set of audiences as they do.

Pricing below the market

This way, you can undermine your potential competitors with more attractive prices and possibly steal their customers.

Determine your profit and set your price

Once you have your base price, you can calculate a selling price with the profit you want. An article from Entrepreneur states that most retailers would like to shoot for a profit margin of about 50%. Using this 50% margin, all you need to do is multiply the cost to produce by two and get your retail price. But if you aim for any other profit percentage, this is the formula you need to incorporate.

Retail Price = [(cost to produce) ÷ (100-profit %)] x 100

Emotions over numbers

The next is the most important one, which many don’t consider while pricing their product. It is “people arent rational always”.

If people are rational all the time, then the pricing would be firmly based on the formulas. You could easily plug your cost into equations, get a price that people would agree, and start selling. But people aren’t like that. They are emotional, and whether you think about it or not, the price you quote will trigger an emotional response from your customers.

Great pricing consists of taking note of human behavior and emotions to find a soft spot to persuade people to choose your t-shirts. Here is a quick tactic that will help you optimize your price for emotion over logic with all this in mind.

Set your price ending with a non-round number

Yes, avoid zero and five. The reason is— while people are scanning through information to make a decision, they tend to get lazy. So, even though the difference between $40 and $39 is just $1, it feels like a lot more. And people will make decisions based on that feeling.

You can also have a look at Top Websites To Design Custom T-Shirts

Offer a combo and give a price break

Rather than selling all your products individually, think about giving a combo deal as well. If you are selling two different t-shirts at $20 each, consider giving an option to buy them together at $35.

Many experts have already spoken about how creating a combo can increase your revenue, and in short, all they say is “When it is applied right, it works”. You can sell more t-shirts with minimal effort, also your customer gets to save money. It’s a win-win overall.

A key to setting a combo is to make sure you offer people an option to buy individually. Some customers might want one, and in that case, it helps. Also, when you offer individually, your customer gets to see the offer they get by buying a combo.

Use Anchor Pricing

This means show an original price (strike-off) and then show the price you are charging for it (obviously lesser than the actual cost). A brand that does a great use of anchor pricing is Huckberry, an ecommerce website which focuses on men’s wear. They give some exclusive offers to their customers through partnerships with brands. For example, they sell a branded shirt whose original price is $30 at $24.98. This makes people want to get it as they have a deal and because of the non-round number.

Another excellent use for anchor pricing is when combined with the combo tactic. So with the same example, purchasing two t-shirts individually would cost $40 but you are are giving them at $35. This way, customers know the value and see how much they’re saving

Keep in mind the shipping costs

If all your selling process is online and you see people from around the world interested in your t-shirts, you should think about the shipping costs. You need to consider what kind of shipping price you are going to offer to your customers. If you offer free shipping on all the products, it is going to boost your sales. Actually its a fact that customers are 4 to 5 times more likely to buy something if you offer free shipping, but that would mean higher product cost since you have to cover the shipping.

Remember, at the end of the day, you are selling your hardwork. You would have spent several days thinking of color schemes, typography, and curated a unique design that stands out. It doesn’t end with just that. Then there is this huge process of selecting the best yet affordable fabric and giving it to the right printer for getting them done. All of these should be worth the price people pay for. It is imperative to keep all this in mind while determining the price of your t-shirts.

If you offer people the best T-shirt prices, of course, they are going to love it and would be willing to spend on that. So, make sure you never give up on the quality factor, as it might also turn out to be your selling factor. Check out some quality designs for your Tshirts at All Time Design