Embroidery pricing calculator
The Richardson 115 Low Pro Trucker: lower-profile version of the 112. The calculator below opens with a $8.00 blank filled in, which is a rough wholesale starting point. Replace it with the price from your own supplier for the color and size you are buying.
The total stitches in the design, from your stitch file.
Most shops charge between $1.00 and $3.00.
If you don't have a stitch count yet, start from a common job.
These are ballpark counts for typical designs. Replace the number with the real one once the design is digitized.
Or estimate from the size of the design.
Rough estimate: 8,400 stitches
What you pay for the shirt, hat, tote, or towel. Enter 0 if the customer supplies it.
What you multiply the blank cost by. Doubling is the common rule.
Your charge for each time the piece gets hooped and set up.
One for a chest design. Add one for each sleeve, back, or second location.
The fewest stitches you'll bill a piece for. A small name takes the same hooping and trimming as a big logo. Set 0 to turn it off.
Caps, bunny ears, sleeve placement, tricky fabric, rush work, or a buffer for a chatty order.
How many identical pieces are in this order.
Charged once for a new design, not per piece and not on a reorder.
The least you'll take an order for, no matter what the math says.
Price per piece
$36.00
The order
Shipping, sales tax, and card processing aren't in this number. Add those separately so you can see what the embroidery itself earns.
For a cap-front logo of about 10,000 stitches on a Richardson 115 that cost you $8.00:
Digitizing is on top of that, once per new design, and a second placement adds another hooping fee and its own stitches. A minimum order and a complexity charge for caps, sleeves, or tricky fabric are the other lines the calculator carries; the guide on the main pricing calculator page explains each one.
Each placement is one hooping, and each needs a hoop at least this big. Check yours on the hoop size chart.
Start from the formula: your blank cost doubled, plus $1.50 per 1,000 stitches, plus a hooping fee per placement, plus digitizing on a new design. With a $8.00 blank and a cap-front logo at about 10,000 stitches, that is $16.00 + $15.00 + $5.00 = $36.00, rounded up to $36.00 per piece before digitizing. Put your real blank cost into the calculator above; it changes the answer more than anything else.
Because the blank's invoice price is not what it costs you. Freight, the odd misprinted piece, the time to order and receive it, and carrying stock all sit on top of it. Doubling covers that and leaves a margin on the garment itself, and it keeps one rule across every blank instead of a different markup for each one.
It is a rough starting point, not a quote. Wholesale prices move with color, size, sales, and which supplier you buy from, and extended sizes cost more. Read the price off your own supplier's page for the exact color and size before you quote, and pass any extended-size upcharge through at the raw difference.
Not on the stitching. Every piece takes the same stitches and the same hooping whether it is one or fifty, so those lines stay full on every piece. What you charge once is digitizing, because the design is made once, and any handling fee you charge per order rather than per piece.