Posted by Cory Freeman on September 4, 2009 at 5:44 PM
I've put together some posters and will be taking them to the local visitor centers around me here soon. This will be my first venture into this market so I figure I can print these out myself(for small print runs) until I get a feel for which images are more sellable and/or I get enough orders to justify outsourcing to a print shop like PSPrint or the like.
I'm really curious as to what price they generally purchase these items for. For instance is their purchase price a % of their sales price or some other general rule of thumb? Thanks for any light you can shed on this!
Posted by Steve Sieren on September 6, 2009 at 12:51 AM
I'm probably not the one to ask Cory but I've priced these in different locations and 25 seems to be high and 15 or less is the low.
Posted by Cory Freeman on September 7, 2009 at 9:52 AM
thanks for responding Steve. I got a response to this on another forum and they felt 50% was about right which is what I kinda was figuring on as well. I'll find out this week when I talk to the store director and follow up here.
While you're at it Cory, talk to the store about how your product will be displayed. Posters languish if all a customer can see is the rolled version with maybe a thumbnail on the label. But flat displays or wall mounts of some sort really do augment interest.
And yeah, 50% markup is more or less standard in many retail businesses, but beware of how retailers "think" of a 50 percent markup. Their perspective is on the final or retail price, and a 50% markup means their wholesale cost is 50% of the total. They're not thinking in terms of adding 50% of the wholesale cost to derive a retail. I.e., if you sell a poster to them for $10, it will retail for $20 at a 50% markup, and not $15. A retail price of $15 is going to be seen as a 33% markup if wholesale cost is $10.
We have to watch this point when selling prints from our studio versus selling art prints to galleries. We derive our own retail price for portraits using a "multiplier" of 5x printing costs from the lab. In other words, if it costs us $10 to have a print made, we sell it for $50. In true retail terms that would be an 80% markup. Final retail price is all in "what the market will bear" but the traditional retail means of expressing markup is different than most people are accustomed to thinking.
Posted by Cory Freeman on September 8, 2009 at 10:36 AM
thanks for your thorough response Hank! I know what it will cost for me to produce the posters, per unit, so as long as I can break even or ideally make a couple bucks per unit I'd be happy.
Discussion
4 repliesI'm really curious as to what price they generally purchase these items for. For instance is their purchase price a % of their sales price or some other general rule of thumb? Thanks for any light you can shed on this!
Cory Freeman
Sierra Impressions Photography
bishopweather.com
And yeah, 50% markup is more or less standard in many retail businesses, but beware of how retailers "think" of a 50 percent markup. Their perspective is on the final or retail price, and a 50% markup means their wholesale cost is 50% of the total. They're not thinking in terms of adding 50% of the wholesale cost to derive a retail. I.e., if you sell a poster to them for $10, it will retail for $20 at a 50% markup, and not $15. A retail price of $15 is going to be seen as a 33% markup if wholesale cost is $10.
We have to watch this point when selling prints from our studio versus selling art prints to galleries. We derive our own retail price for portraits using a "multiplier" of 5x printing costs from the lab. In other words, if it costs us $10 to have a print made, we sell it for $50. In true retail terms that would be an 80% markup. Final retail price is all in "what the market will bear" but the traditional retail means of expressing markup is different than most people are accustomed to thinking.