Channel Margin Calculator
What direct, wholesale, and marketplace sales each leave behind, per unit.
Your prices and your costs, channel by channel
Direct
Wholesale
Marketplace
What each channel leaves you
Direct, per unit
46% of the price stays with you
Wholesale, per unit
33% of the price stays with you
Marketplace, per unit
27% of the price stays with you
One wholesale case
12 units at wholesale carry the same contribution as 5.2 direct sales. That is the trade you are pricing in a stockist conversation.
Contribution is what’s left of a sale after the cost of making the unit and every fee it takes to get it there. It’s the money that pays your overhead, and it’s the only per-unit figure worth comparing across channels, because price alone says nothing about what a channel keeps.
Email me the chart and an editable pro forma. A pro forma is a worksheet built on your own assumptions rather than last year’s actuals, and this one adds your own fee overrides per channel, a packaging and fulfillment cost split out from them, and a row for testing a shift of units between channels.
Calculations are stored anonymously and feed regional benchmarks; nothing you enter identifies you unless you add an email.
How it decides
Every channel answers the same question. Take the price, subtract what the unit cost to make, and subtract everyone in the middle. That means the commission, the card fee, and the shipping or the delivery run. What’s left is the contribution, the only number the three channels can be compared on. A higher price with more hands in it routinely loses to a lower price with none.
The case equivalence is the negotiating number. A wholesale order nets less per unit and moves more units at once, so the honest comparison is one case against the direct orders it displaces. Once you know a case equals five direct sales, you know exactly how much volume a stockist has to bring you before the relationship pays. Before you move a price to fix a thin channel, the pricing calculator shows what the move asks of your volume.
It prices one unit, and a channel is more than its per-unit math. Wholesale pays less and buys in bulk on net-30 terms. A farmers market pays best and costs you a Saturday. Whether a stockist’s volume is worth the thinner margin, and whether your production can even feed it, are questions the arithmetic sets up and you decide.
The presets are starting shapes, not statistics. They exist so the form isn’t a wall of zeros. Every number in them should end up replaced with yours, and fee schedules drift, so check your own statements rather than trusting any default here.
The farm and food shape
A $10 jar at the market, $6 to the co-op, $12 on a marketplace with a 15 percent commission and shipping to cover. Run the preset and the jar keeps about $4.60 sold direct, $2.00 through the co-op, and $3.20 shipped, so a twelve-jar case carries the contribution of roughly five direct sales. That’s the price of reach, stated in jars, and it isn’t an argument against the co-op. The question the number decides is how many cases a month make the relationship worth it.
The maker shape
A $45 piece on your own site keeps about $23 after card fees and shipping. The same piece wholesales at half retail, which is standard in craft, and keeps $8.50. On a handmade marketplace it keeps about $20.50 after roughly 9.5 percent in combined fees. A six-piece case equals just over two direct orders. That is why makers who can generate their own demand drift toward direct. Makers who can’t generate it pay wholesale’s toll for a shelf that generates it for them.
The boutique retail shape
A shop selling its own line at $38 in-store keeps about $22.40 of it. Selling the same piece through a marketplace keeps $11.30 after commission and shipping. Wholesaling it to other stores keeps $4.00. Here the case equivalence is brutal, because an eight-unit case equals about a sale and a half at your own register. That is the honest reason a small retail brand’s wholesale program has to be a volume story or no story at all.
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The assessment is free. I pull your public data and show you what I see, and your numbers stay yours.