I stopped marking up garments (and you should too)

I get asked about garment markup constantly.

"Jesse, how much do you mark up the blanks?"

"What's the right percentage to add?"

"Should I do 20 percent? 30 percent?"

Here's my answer: I don't mark up garments anymore. At all.

And it's one of the best pricing decisions I've made.

For years, I did what most printers do. I'd take the cost of the blank, add a markup percentage, and roll that into my quote.

But it always felt off.

The markup had nothing to do with my work. It wasn't connected to my skill, my equipment, or the service I was providing. It was just... there.

And worse, it created a real problem: it punished customers for choosing better garments.

Let's say I quoted a job on a cotton tee at $3.50 per blank. With a 30 percent markup, that's $4.55 before printing.

Then the customer asks about a nicer tri-blend option at $6.75 per blank. With the same markup, that jumps to $8.78.

Suddenly, the price gap isn't the $3 difference in the garment cost. It's a $4.23 difference because of my markup structure. If that order is 100 garments, that’s a $123 increase in the total ($423 vs $300).

Plus, you know what's weird about that?

We spend all this time perfecting our craft. Dialing in our screens. Getting our registration tight. Mixing the perfect ink colors.

Then we quote a job, and the customer picks the cheapest shirt possible because our pricing structure accidentally made the upgrade feel too expensive.

We're literally pricing ourselves into printing on worse garments.

I raised my base print price and stopped marking up the garments entirely.

My profit per piece stayed the same, but now the garment cost is just the garment cost.

When a customer asks about upgrading to a nicer shirt, the price only goes up by the actual difference in the blank. Not some inflated version of it.

And here's the part that surprised me: I started telling customers exactly what the garment costs.

"This shirt is $12. My print price is $8. So you're at $20 per piece."

That transparency has built more trust than I expected. Customers understand what they're paying for. They see that I'm not hiding anything. And when they want to upgrade, they can see exactly what it costs to do that.

It's simple. It's clear. And it works.

One more thing: I always price garments at their regular price, not the sale price.

If a shirt is normally $6.85 but I can usually get it on sale for $6.20, I'm still quoting it at $7 (I round up to the nearest quarter just to keep things clean).

That way, if the garment isn't on sale when I need to order, I'm covered. And if it is on sale, I pocket the difference.

Those vendor sale prices? They're for you, not your customers.

Here's the thing: we're printers, not garment resellers.

Our value is in the work we do, not in the blank we source.

When your pricing reflects that, everything gets simpler. Your quotes make more sense. Your customers understand what they're paying for. And you stop accidentally talking people out of better products.

If you're still marking up garments, I'd encourage you to rethink it.

Raise your print price if you need to. Build your profit into the work you're actually doing. And let the garment cost be what it is.

Your pricing will be clearer. Your customers will trust you more. And you'll end up printing on better shirts.

Talk soon,

Jesse