Landed cost
$22
your true floor
× 2.2
wholesale
Wholesale
$48
What retailers pay
× 2.3
retail
Retail (RRP)
$110
What shoppers pay
This is the definitive guide to wholesale pricing for streetwear brands selling to retailers.
It walks the full chain of landed cost, wholesale, and retail, explains the keystone margin every buyer expects, and shows you how to price wholesale without quietly destroying the price on your own website.
Wholesale is where a lot of small streetwear brands lose money without realizing it.
You spend months perfecting a hoodie, land a stockist, send over a price, and the buyer passes.
Or worse: they say yes, double your number, and suddenly your $48 hoodie is sitting on their shelf at $110 while your own site sells it for $85.
Now you’re competing with your own retailer and losing.
The fix isn’t a magic markup.
It’s understanding how three prices relate, what a retailer actually needs to survive, and how to set one wholesale number that protects everyone in the chain, including you.
That’s what this guide builds, step by step, ending with a repeatable model you can run on every product.
1. How cost, wholesale, and retail prices relate:
Every product you sell has three prices, and they’re stacked on top of each other like floors in a building.
Get the relationship wrong on the ground floor, and every floor above it is off.
The three prices, defined:
Landed cost is what it actually costs you to have a finished unit in hand, ready to sell.
Not the factory’s invoice price; that’s just one line.
Landed cost is the factory price plus inbound freight, duties, customs clearance, and any per-unit handling.
This is your true floor, and pricing up from anything lower is the single most common way founders accidentally sell at a loss.
The wholesale price is what you charge a retailer who buys in bulk to resell.
It’s lower than retail because the retailer is taking on the work and risk of selling to the public, and they need their own margin on top.
Retail price, often written as RRP (recommended retail price) or MSRP (manufacturer’s suggested retail price), is what the final shopper pays.
It has to cover not just the product but the retailer’s rent, staff, returns, and the discounts they’ll inevitably run.
The Price Build:
Read the chain in two multiplications:
landed cost × wholesale markup = wholesale price
Then wholesale price × retail markup = retail price.
In streetwear, that typically lands the shelf price at roughly 4-6× your production cost by the time it reaches the shopper.
If your numbers don’t roughly fit that band, something in the chain is mispriced.
Those multipliers aren’t arbitrary.
Across the apparel industry, the standard starting point is a wholesale markup of around 2.0–2.5× cost, then a retail markup of roughly 2.2-2.5× wholesale on top.
Stack those and the shopper pays four to six times what it cost to make.
That sounds enormous until you see how thin everyone’s real margin is once overhead comes out, which is the whole point of Chapter 2.
The one mistake that breaks every pricing decision: markup vs. margin:
Before you touch a single number, you have to know the difference between markup and margin.
Founders confuse these constantly, and the confusion can price a product 20–30% below where they think it is.
They measure the same gap between cost and price but divide by different things:
| Term | Formula | Divides by |
|---|---|---|
| Markup % | (Price − Cost) ÷ Cost | your cost |
| Margin % | (Price − Cost) ÷ Price | your selling price |
Because price is always higher than cost, the markup percentage is always the bigger-looking number for the same product.
A worked example makes it concrete.
Take a hoodie that costs you $40 landed and sells wholesale at $80.
- The markup is 100%; you added $40 on top of a $40 cost.
- The margin is 50%; that same $40 profit is half of the $80 price.
Same product, same dollars, two very different percentages.
So when a buyer says, “I need a 55% margin,” and you reply with a 55% markup, you’ve just handed them far less than they asked for, and the deal quietly dies.
A 100% markup equals a 50% margin; a 50% markup is only a 33.3% margin.
Memorise that one conversion and you’ll catch most pricing errors before they happen.
Quick check:
Retailers almost always talk in margin.
Manufacturers and brands often think in markup.
When you’re in a wholesale conversation, translate everything into margin so you’re speaking the buyer’s language.
Why the landed cost, not the factory invoice, is your real floor:
Here’s where streetwear founders importing from overseas get caught.
The factory quotes you, say, $16 a hoodie.
You mark that up and feel great.
But by the time the unit reaches your warehouse, freight, duty, and clearance have pushed your true cost to $22.
You’ve been pricing off a number that doesn’t exist.
The accounting line here is genuinely useful: freight you pay to receive inventory (freight-in) is part of the product’s cost.
Freight you pay to ship to a customer (freight-out) is a separate selling expense.
The IRS draws this line in Publication 538, and it matters because lumping the wrong costs in either understates your markup or hides a loss.
Build your wholesale price up from landed cost every time.
If you haven’t built a full unit cost yet, start with our cost breakdown guide.
2. Keystone and beyond: what retailers expect
To price wholesale well, you have to understand what the person buying from you needs to survive.
And what they need is built into one word every buyer knows: keystone.
What “keystone” actually means:
Keystone pricing is the oldest rule of thumb in retail: double the wholesale cost to get the retail price.
Buy at $50, sell at $100.
That’s a 100% markup, which, as you now know, is a 50% gross margin.
For you, the brand, keystone is the key insight in reverse: whatever wholesale price you set, expect the retailer to roughly double it on the shelf.
If you sell at $48, plan for it to retail near $96-$110. If that number is wrong for your market, the problem is your wholesale price, not the retailer.
2×
Keystone: retail = wholesale doubled (100% markup = 50% margin)
2.2-2.5×
Keystone-plus: the modern streetwear/apparel norm
2-5%
A retailer’s typical net margin after rent, staff, and markdowns
Why “keystone-plus” is now the real expectation:
Pure keystone is the floor, not the target.
Most modern apparel brands price so retailers can take a 2.2–2.5× markup over wholesale, not a flat 2×.
Boutiques and specialty streetwear stores in particular push above keystone because their volumes are smaller and their markdown risk is higher.
So when you hear a buyer ask for “keystone,” read it as “keystone at minimum.”
If your wholesale price only supports a flat 2× at a retail price the market accepts, you’ve left the retailer no room to discount, no room to fund a sale, and no cushion.
They’ll either pass or squeeze you on the wholesale number.
The number founders never see: a retailer’s real margin is tiny
This is the part that reframes the whole conversation.
That 50% gross margin a retailer makes on keystone looks fat. It isn’t.
By the time rent, staff, shrinkage, returns, and end-of-season markdowns come out, a retailer’s net margin often lands somewhere around 2–5%.
Rent alone can eat 5 15% of revenue and labor another 15 25%, before a single item is marked down.
That’s why retailers cling to keystone-plus: it’s not greed, it’s the only spread that survives their own cost structure.
Once you internalize this, you stop resenting the markup and start pricing for it.
A wholesale price that doesn’t leave the retailer a real margin isn’t a competitive price; it’s a deal that won’t get placed or won’t get reordered.
Reframe:
Your wholesale price isn’t “your price minus a discount.” It’s the retailer’s cost, the bottom floor of their price build.
Set it so their keystone-plus markup lands on a shelf price your market will actually pay. That’s the whole job.
What retailers expect beyond the number:
Price is the headline, but buyers weigh more than that when they decide whether to carry you.
Briefly, expect questions about:
- Minimums and case packs: A minimum order value (or unit count) and whether sizes come in fixed packs.
- Terms: Net-30 or net-60 payment is common in wholesale; new brands often start prepaid or net-15 until trust is built.
- Margin protection: Buyers want confidence you won’t undercut them on your own site, the subject of the next chapter.
- Reliability: Lead times, restock ability, and consistent quality. A great price means nothing if you can’t ship on time.
3. Protecting your DTC price while selling wholesale:
This is where most brands shoot themselves in the foot.
You sell direct-to-consumer (DTC) on your own site and wholesale to stockists.
Those two channels are now competing, and if you price them carelessly, you’ll undercut the very retailers you need.
The trap, in one example:
Say you sell a hoodie DTC for $85.
A boutique wants to stock it, so you offer a wholesale price of $48.
They apply keystone-plus and put it on the shelf at $110.
Now the same hoodie is $85 on your site and $110 in their store.
Every shopper who finds both will buy from you, and the boutique, watching their stock sit, will drop you at the next buy and tell other buyers you’re not safe to carry.
You didn’t get greedy.
You just never reconciled your DTC price with the retail price your wholesale number implies.
That reconciliation is the entire discipline of selling in two channels.
The fix: your DTC price is the RRP:
The cleanest rule for a brand that sells both ways: your own site sells at the recommended retail price, not below it.
Your DTC store and your stockists should land at roughly the same shelf price.
You’re not the cheap channel; you’re the full-price flagship.
Retailers can then compete on service, location, and curation rather than racing you to the bottom.
That means your wholesale price has to be set so that the retailer’s keystone-plus markup produces an RRP you’re genuinely happy to charge on your own site.
If their markup pushes the shelf price above your comfortable DTC price, your wholesale number is too high.
If it lands below, you’ve got room.
This two-way check is the heart of the model in Chapter 5.
The Keystone-Safe Price:
A wholesale price is keystone-safe when both things are true at once:
(1) It clears your landed-cost margin floor.
(2) When a retailer applies keystone-plus, the resulting shelf price matches your DTC price and never undercuts it or overshoots what your market will pay.
One number, two floors, and a ceiling, all satisfied.
That’s the target every product is priced toward in this guide.
Holding the line: MAP and channel discipline
Bigger brands enforce this with a MAP policy (Minimum Advertised Price), a stated floor below which no one, including you, advertises the product.
It keeps your stockists from getting undercut and keeps your brand from looking cheap.
You don’t need a formal MAP on day one, but you do need the discipline behind it:
- Don’t run DTC sitewide discounts that drop you below your stockists: A 30% off flash sale on your site is a knife in your retailers’ back.
- Keep promotions channel-aware: If you must discount, do it through mechanisms that don’t reset your public price (private sample sales, archive/seconds, or loyalty perks) rather than a permanent public markdown.
- Be consistent across stockists: Wildly different wholesale prices to different retailers create resentment and pricing chaos. Tiered pricing is fine; favoritism that shows up on shelves is not.
Legal note: pricing policies like MAP and any agreement that touches resale prices sit on legal ground that varies by country and can run into competition/antitrust rules.
Treat the above as commercial guidance, not legal advice. Confirm any formal pricing policy with a qualified lawyer in your market before you put it in a contract.
Channel strategy goes deeper than price.
How to set your headline number in the pricing strategy guide, and why positioning lets premium pricing hold in the brand identity guide.
4. Building a line sheet that prices both:
A line sheet is the one-page (or one-deck) document a buyer uses to place a wholesale order. It’s your menu.
A good line sheet does more than list products and their prices for both sides of the table at a glance so the buyer can see their margin without doing math.
What must every line sheet show?
The non-negotiable columns are the two prices side by side: your wholesale price and the suggested retail price (RRP/MSRP).
Showing the RRP isn’t optional; it tells the buyer exactly what margin they’ll make and signals that you understand the chain.
A line sheet that hides the retail price makes a buyer do work, and buyers who have to do work move on.
| Element | Why it’s on the sheet |
|---|---|
| Product name + style code | So orders are unambiguous and reorders are fast. |
| Photo | Clean the front/back on white. Buyers skim visually first. |
| Colorways & size run | What’s actually available to order? |
| Wholesale price | The buyer’s cost is your real number. |
| RRP / MSRP | Shows the buyer their margin instantly. Keep it consistent with your DTC price. |
| Minimum order | MOQ or minimum order value, plus any case-pack rules. |
| Terms & lead time | Payment terms, ship window, and restockability. |
A line sheet is a sales tool, not a spreadsheet dump. Every column should reduce a buyer’s effort or risk.
Worked line-sheet row:
Here’s how a single style reads when it’s priced for both sides.
Note how the wholesale and RRP columns let the buyer see their 50%+ margin without lifting a calculator:
| Style | Wholesale | RRP | Buyer margin | MOQ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heavyweight Hoodie · SL-H01 | $48 | $110 | 56% | 24 |
| Boxy Tee · SL-T03 | $18 | $42 | 57% | 36 |
| Coach Jacket · SL-J02 | $62 | $140 | 56% | 18 |
Buyer margin = (RRP − Wholesale) ÷ RRP.
If you want the full structure plus a starter template, build from our line sheet guide.
5. The Keystone-Safe Price: a wholesale pricing model:
Now we put it together into a repeatable model you can run on any product.
The goal of the Keystone-Safe Price is one wholesale number that satisfies your floor, the retailer’s floor, and your DTC ceiling all at once.
Run these five steps for each style.
01:
Start from landed cost, not the factory invoice:
Add up the true cost of one finished unit in your hands: factory price + inbound freight per unit + duty + clearance + per-unit handling. Call this L. Everything is built up from here. If you skip this, every number downstream is wrong.
02:
Set your wholesale margin floor:
Decide the minimum margin you’ll accept on a wholesale sale. A common apparel target is a 50%+ wholesale gross margin, which means wholesale is at least 2× landed cost. To hit a specific margin, divide: Wholesale = L / (1 − target margin). For a 55% margin on $22 landed: $22 ÷ 0.45 = $49. This is your floor; never price below it.
03:
Project the retail price the buyer will set:
Multiply your candidate’s wholesale price by Keystone Plus (2.2–2.5×) to see where it lands on the shelf. At $49 wholesale × 2.2 = ~$108 RRP. That’s the price the public will actually see, so it has to be a price your market accepts for that product.
04:
Reconcile against your DTC price (the keystone-safe check):
Compare that projected RRP to what you charge or want to charge on your own site. They should match. If the RRP overshoots what your market pays, your wholesale price is too high. If it sits below your DTC price, you’re undercutting your own stockists. Adjust the wholesale number until the projected RRP and your DTC price line up. That alignment is what makes the price keystone-safe.
05:
Pressure-test the floor and lock the sheet:
Confirm the final wholesale price still clears Step 2’s margin floor after the Step 4 adjustment. If reconciling forced you below your floor, the product is mispriced at the cost level. Revisit sourcing or design; don’t just absorb the loss. Once both floors and the ceiling hold, lock the wholesale price and RRP onto your line sheet together.
A fully worked example:
Watch the model run end-to-end on one hoodie:
| Step | Move | Number |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Landed cost (L) | $22 |
| 2 | Wholesale floor at 55% margin → 22 ÷ 0.45 | $49 |
| 3 | Projected RRP at Keystone Plus 2.2× | $108 |
| 4 | DTC price you want / market accepts | $110 |
| 4 | Reconcile: nudge wholesale to align RRP ≈ DTC | $48–$50 |
| 5 | Floor check: still ≥ 55% margin? ($48 = 54%) | ✓ hold |
The point is the logic: wholesale is set where the retailer’s markup lands on your DTC price while your margin floor still holds.
Notice what the model prevented.
Without it, you might have set wholesale at $40 to “win the deal,” which would have put the shelf at ~$88, undercutting your $110 DTC store and crushing your own margin.
Or you’d have priced wholesale at $60, pushing the shelf to $132 and pricing the hoodie out of your market.
The keystone-safe number, $48–$50, is the one place where every constraint is satisfied.
From the manual
This is one chapter of The Complete Streetwear Manufacturing Guide
These chapters cover taking a streetwear brand from idea to shipped units, costing, sourcing, tech packs, QC, freight, and launch. All written from the Sialkot factory floor.
Wholesale pricing FAQ
What is keystone pricing?
Keystone pricing means setting the retail price at exactly double the wholesale cost, a 100% markup, which works out to a 50% gross margin.
It’s the classic retail rule of thumb because it’s simple and historically left stores enough margin to cover their costs.
Most modern streetwear brands now price for “keystone-plus” (a 2.2–2.5× retail markup), so retailers have room to discount.
What's the difference between markup and margin?
Both measure the gap between cost and price, but markup divides that gap by your cost, while margin divides it by your selling price.
A 100% markup is the same as a 50% margin; a 50% markup is only a 33.3% margin.
Retailers usually talk in margin, so translate your numbers into margin during any wholesale conversation.
What's a good wholesale margin for a clothing brand?
A common target is a 50%+ gross margin on wholesale sales, meaning your wholesale price is at least double your landed cost.
That ensures you make money on the bulk sale while still leaving the retailer enough room to apply their own keystone-plus markup.
Your exact floor depends on your landed cost and brand positioning.
Premium streetwear can support a higher floor.
Can I sell on my own website cheaper than my stockists?
You can, but you shouldn’t.
Undercutting your own retailers on your DTC site is the fastest way to lose stockists; they’ll watch their stock sit and drop you.
The cleaner approach is to make your own site the full-price flagship: sell DTC at roughly the recommended retail price, and let retailers compete on service and curation rather than price.
What's the difference between MSRP, RRP, and SRP?
They’re effectively the same thing under different names: the price a brand recommends the final shopper pays.
MSRP is “manufacturer’s suggested retail price,” RRP is “recommended retail price,” and SRP is “suggested retail price.
All three are guidance, not a mandate. A retailer can usually price as they choose, which is why margin protection and (for larger brands) MAP policies exist.
How do I price wholesale so retailers actually carry my line?
Set your wholesale price so that when a retailer applies their normal keystone-plus markup, the resulting shelf price both matches your own DTC price and sits where your market is willing to buy while still clearing your own margin floor.
That’s the keystone-safe method in Chapter 5.
If retailers keep passing on price, your wholesale number is almost always too high relative to the retail price your market accepts.
On the floor · Sialkot