Free tool
Is your clothing brand actually profitable?
Most first drops are priced by looking at a competitor's tag, not by counting costs. This calculator does the counting: landed cost, platform fee, ad spend per order and the cost of returns, then tells you what is left per unit and how many units it takes to cover the run.
Your numbers
Enter real costs. Everything is calculated in your browser — nothing is sent anywhere.
The choice of blank moves the answer more than the ad budget
Take a $39 retail tee. Cutting $2 from the blank raises gross margin by $2 per unit — about 5% of the price. Moving to a blank that supports a $49 price raises it by $10, and the customer is buying a heavier fabric they can feel rather than a discount they cannot see.
That is the arithmetic behind most premium blanks: the gain is not in the cost line, it is in what the price can become. The calculator on this page lets you test that directly — raise the blank cost, raise the price, and watch what happens to break-even quantity.
Three numbers founders leave out
Ad spend per order, the return rate, and the fixed cost of getting to the first sale (samples, photography, labels, packaging). Leave any of them out and the unit looks profitable while the run does not. All three are in the inputs above for exactly that reason.
Questions
What counts as "profit per unit" here?
Selling price minus landed cost (blank, decoration, freight and duty), minus payment and platform fees, minus ad spend per order, minus the expected cost of returns. It is the cash you keep per shipped order, before fixed costs.
Why does a higher-cost blank often produce more profit?
Because retail price is set by what the customer perceives, not by your cost. A blank at +$2 cost that supports +$10 retail adds $8 of gross margin per unit. Volume then does less work to reach the same profit.
What is a realistic ad spend per order?
It depends on the channel and the creative, but a first drop on paid social commonly lands between $10 and $25 per order. Enter your own measured number rather than a target, because a target hides the loss.
How should returns be counted?
As a cost, not a refund. The returned unit usually loses the sale, half the outbound freight and the packaging, and takes weeks to come back. A return rate of 8% at a $39 price removes more than $3 per unit on average.
Is the calculator free to use?
Yes, and it runs entirely in your browser. No email, no account, no data sent.