How to Price an Embroidery Job for Wholesale Orders

Wholesale embroidery pricing isn't just retail pricing with a discount slapped on — it's a genuinely different calculation, because the fixed costs (digitizing, setup, hooping time per garment) behave differently at volume than they do for a single retail piece, and pricing needs to reflect that difference rather than guessing at a round discount number.

Digitizing cost amortizes across the order

The one-time cost of digitizing a design is the same whether you're producing 5 pieces or 500 — spread across a large wholesale order, that fixed cost becomes a small fraction of the per-unit price, while the same design produced as a single retail piece has to absorb the full digitizing cost on its own. This is the single biggest reason wholesale unit pricing can legitimately be lower than retail.

Per-garment time still scales with volume

Unlike digitizing, the actual hooping and stitching time per garment doesn't shrink with volume — each piece still takes roughly the same machine time regardless of order size, so per-unit labor and machine cost stays relatively constant even as digitizing cost per unit drops. Don't confuse the two when calculating a volume discount.

Set a genuine minimum order quantity

A minimum order quantity protects against the scenario where a very small "wholesale" order still has to absorb the full digitizing cost but is priced as if it were large-volume — a stated minimum (with digitizing charged separately below that threshold) keeps small orders profitable instead of quietly subsidized by larger ones.

Build in a buffer for reruns and mistakes

Wholesale batches occasionally need a re-stitched piece due to a machine issue, a thread break, or a misfeed — pricing with a small built-in buffer for this reality, rather than assuming every single piece in a large batch will run perfectly the first time, protects margin on the occasional order where something does need a redo.