How to Price Custom T-Shirts
Four steps to a defensible price.
Your true unit cost.
Five lines. The first two are the ones everyone includes; the last three are the ones that decide whether the business works.
| Line | How to work it out | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Transfer | Exact — width × height × rate. A 10" × 12" print is $2.99. | $2.99 |
| Blank garment | Your actual supplier price including any shipping. | $8.00 |
| Labour | Minutes per shirt × your hourly rate ÷ 60. Be honest. | $1.25 |
| Waste allowance | 3–5% of the above for misprints, miscuts and reprints. | $0.61 |
| Packaging | Poly bag, care card, box, tape. Per unit. | $0.60 |
| True unit cost | Add them up. This is the number that matters. | $13.45 |
Costing your own time.
If you are a one-person operation it feels reasonable to leave labour out — you were going to be in the workshop anyway, and the money all lands in the same account.
It is still the wrong call, for one reason: without a labour line you cannot tell a good job from a bad one. A fifty-shirt order at a thin margin and a fifteen-shirt order at a healthy one look similar on a spreadsheet that costs your time at zero. Put a number on your hour — even a modest one — and the difference becomes immediately visible.
What to count
• Pressing — about a minute per garment once you are moving.
• Setup and teardown, divided across the run.
• Trimming transfers, if you did not order cutting.
• Folding, bagging, labelling.
• Admin — the quote, the emails, the invoice. Real, and easily forgotten on small jobs.
One to two minutes per shirt all-in is a realistic planning figure for a run of a few dozen. Small orders carry proportionally more admin, which is exactly why very small jobs need a higher margin rather than the same one.
Margins by channel.
| Channel | Typical multiple | On a $13.45 cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retail / direct to consumer | 2.5–3× | $34–40 | Covers marketing, returns and the risk of unsold stock. |
| Online marketplace | 2.8–3.5× | $38–47 | Platform fees and ad spend come out of this. |
| Wholesale to a retailer | 1.6–2× | $22–27 | Lower margin, higher volume, no end-customer service. |
| Corporate / team orders | 2–2.5× | $27–34 | Invoiced, repeatable, low marketing cost. |
| Fundraiser | 1.8–2.5× | $24–34 | The margin is the fundraising. Below 2× the volunteers subsidise it. |
These are starting points, not rules. What they are useful for is noticing when you are badly outside them — pricing a retail shirt at 1.4× cost is a decision, and it should be a conscious one.
Price breaks that reflect real costs.
Your unit cost genuinely falls with quantity, but not for the reason people assume. Our transfer rate does not drop — it is the same per square inch at any volume. What falls is your labour and admin per shirt, because setup, quoting and invoicing are spread across more units.
| Quantity | What changes | Suggested approach |
|---|---|---|
| 1–5 | Admin dominates | Charge a premium or a minimum order value. These jobs lose money at list price. |
| 6–24 | Admin still significant | Standard retail pricing. |
| 25–99 | Labour per shirt drops | Modest discount — 5–10%. |
| 100–249 | Efficient run | 10–15%. Gang the transfers to cut film waste too. |
| 250+ | Very efficient | 15–20%, and consider whether screen printing is now cheaper for the customer. |
The last row is worth taking seriously. Telling a customer at 400 pieces that screen printing would serve them better is the kind of honesty that produces referrals — and they will be back with the next twenty-piece job.
Four ways pricing goes wrong.
Averaging print sizes
Charging the same for a left chest logo and a full front means you lose on every full front and overcharge every logo. Per-square-inch pricing on the supply side makes it easy to pass the real difference through — $0.40 against $2.99 is not a rounding error.
Matching a print-on-demand price
POD platforms have different economics and often subsidise unit price with volume agreements. Matching their retail price with your cost structure is a route to working for nothing.
Forgetting shipping
Either build it into the price or charge it separately, but do not absorb it silently. On a low-margin shirt, shipping can be the entire profit.
Never revisiting the numbers
Blank prices move. Review your costing twice a year — a price set eighteen months ago against a blank that has gone up two dollars is quietly losing money on every unit.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I work out what to charge for a custom t-shirt?
- Add your transfer cost, blank cost, a realistic labour figure and an allowance for waste. That is your true unit cost. Then apply a margin appropriate to the channel — fundraisers, retail and wholesale all sit at different levels.
- What margin should I aim for on custom shirts?
- Retail commonly runs at roughly 2.5–3× your true unit cost. Wholesale is nearer 1.6–2×. Fundraisers vary because the goal is raising money rather than maximising margin, but working below 2× on a fundraiser usually means the volunteers are subsidising it.
- Should I include my own labour if it is just me?
- Yes, always. Costing at zero labour is how people end up with a busy business that makes no money. Put a number on your hour even if you never pay it to yourself — it tells you whether the work is worth doing.
- How much time does pressing actually take?
- Roughly a minute per garment once you have a rhythm, plus setup and packing. For costing, one to two minutes per shirt all-in is a realistic figure for a run of a few dozen.
- What do people forget to cost?
- Three things: their own labour, waste and reprints, and packaging and shipping. Any one of them can turn an apparently healthy margin into break-even.
- Should I charge more for a bigger print?
- Yes, because it costs you more. Per-square-inch pricing means a full front is genuinely several times the cost of a left chest logo, and passing that through is both fair and simpler than averaging.
Related guides
What direct-to-film actually is, how the process works step by step, what it prints well on, and what it costs in Canada.
How to Press DTF Transfers (Settings That Actually Work)Exact temperatures, times and pressures by fabric, why the second press is not optional, and the four mistakes behind most failed prints.
Best File Format for DTF Printing: PNG, PDF or JPGWhy PNG is the safe default, when a PDF is genuinely better, and the reason a JPG prints a white box on a black shirt.
DTF Artwork Requirements — The Complete ChecklistResolution, transparency, edges, colour mode and sizing, with the pixel maths and a pre-flight checklist you can run in a minute.
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