Oct 24, 2026News & Insights
Pricing Cushion Covers: Start From Landed Cost, Not the Invoice
The invoice figure is the smallest number in the calculation. What one cover really costs once it sits in your stockroom decides whether a season earns anything.
A buyer opens a quotation, sees a figure per piece, and feels relief. That figure is the start of the calculation, not the end of it.
By the time the goods reach a shelf, several costs have attached themselves to that number. If nobody added them, the retail price was built on something that does not exist.
Landed cost is the only number you can price from
Landed cost is what one cover costs once it is sitting in your stockroom, ready to sell. It starts with the supplier's price and ends after freight, duty, clearing and the small charges that nobody quotes up front.
Ask which terms you were quoted. A price ex works and a price delivered are different products wearing the same name. Comparing them without noticing is the most common mistake in the whole process.
The costs that quietly fall out of the calculation
Freight usually arrives as a lump sum for a shipment, not as a per-piece figure. Divide it across the units actually in the cartons, and remember that part of what you paid for is packaging rather than product.
Then come the smaller lines. Bank charges, inspection, inland transport, and the cost of money tied up while the goods travel. None of them is large alone. Together they move the answer.
Add a line for damage and shortages. Not because you expect them, but because a calculation that assumes everything arrives perfectly is a calculation flattering itself.
Markup and margin are not the same thing
Markup is what you add to cost. Margin is what remains when cost is taken away from the selling price. They move in opposite directions as the multiplier rises, and mixing them up turns a comfortable price into a thin one.
Decide which one your business runs on, then keep using it. A shop that switches between the two from order to order cannot tell which lines are actually earning their shelf space.
Let the shelf set the ceiling
Your cost sets the floor. What similar covers sell for nearby sets the ceiling, and the space between the two is the real decision.
Look at covers already on shelves in your own market, not at the cheapest listing online. Online you compete with everyone. On a shelf you compete with the shop next door and with what a customer expects a cover to cost.
If landed cost sits above that ceiling, the answer is usually not a thinner margin. It is a different fabric, a simpler construction, or a different customer.
Test the number before you commit to a season
Order a small quantity, price it, and watch it for a few weeks. Sell-through tells you more than any spreadsheet. If the first batch moves slowly at your planned price, the price may not be the culprit.
Change one thing at a time. Move the price, the photograph and the position together and you finish the season with a result you cannot explain, which is worse than a slow result you can.
Build the landed cost before you send the purchase order, not after the invoice arrives. The few minutes it takes separates choosing a price from discovering one.
If you want the figures behind a quote to be transparent, ask us to break them down line by line. A season is easier to plan when nothing in the price arrives as a surprise.
