How to Price Greeting Cards, With a Calculator

To price greeting cards, cost a card from its share of the print run, the envelope and sleeve, the design time spread over the runs you expect to sell, and the minutes it takes to fold, sleeve and pack. That gives a floor. Price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fees). In the example below, a printed card from a run of 250 costs 45 cents to print, 13 cents for the envelope and sleeve, and with the design and assembly time it comes to 96 cents. At a 55% margin after 5% selling fees, the floor is $2.50. Illustrated cards sell for about $6 retail and $3 wholesale, because the price follows what a card shop charges, not the cost; the floor tells you where wholesale stops working. Below is a card's cost, retail and wholesale, reps, handmade cards, and a free calculator.

The short version

• Cost a card: its share of the print run, the envelope and sleeve, the design time, the assembly.
• Spread the design time over the runs you expect to sell.
• Floor = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fees); retail sits well above it.
• Wholesale is half of retail: $3 for a $6 card.
• A sales rep takes about 15% of wholesale; check what's left.
• Handmade cards are priced on their minutes.
• TaroStack keeps every design counted and costs each run from what the printer charged. More below.

What a card costs

Fox Point Paper Co., a made-up greeting card company in Providence, Rhode Island, I use in these examples, has its illustrated cards printed in runs of 250:

The floor and the price

Card shops sell illustrated cards for about $5 to $7, so a maker's own retail price sits there. The floor matters for wholesale: at $3, a card leaves $1.89, and a design that only sells one run, carrying all its design time, still clears it. How a whole card business adds up, month by month, is in greeting card business plan.

Wholesale and reps

Shops buy at half the retail price, so a $6 card wholesales for $3, often in packs of six of a design. A sales rep or a wholesale platform takes about 15% of that, 45 cents, and shipping to the shop adds about 10 cents a card:

A rep is worth $0.30 a card if they open shops you'd never reach. How to set wholesale terms is in how to price handmade items for wholesale.

Handmade cards

A handmade card, stamped, layered or embellished, is priced on its minutes. With 80 cents of cardstock and embellishments, a 13-cent envelope and ten minutes at $18 an hour, it costs $3.98 with overhead, and $10 at the same margin. Sold at $6, it leaves $1.72 after the ten minutes are paid. Price handmade cards at $8 to $12, or make them in runs with fewer steps.

Get the calculator

Download the greeting card pricing calculator. Type the print run and its cost, the envelopes, the design time share, the assembly minutes, overhead, your hourly rate, fees, the margin you want, a wholesale price and a price to test; it works out the full cost of a card, the floor rounded up to a quarter, and what each price leaves. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

Thirty designs, each printed in its own runs, envelopes in two sizes, shops ordering six of this and twelve of that, and the holiday cards that have to be reprinted in September or not at all. The calculator prices one card; it doesn't say which designs are about to run out or which runs are still sitting in boxes.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack keeps every design counted and costs each run from what the printer charged.

Each design counted. Every design is an item with its stock, so markets, online orders and shop orders take from the same count, and the reorder list in days of cover puts the designs about to run out at the top. How the season shapes that is in stock-to-sales ratio.

Runs costed. Each print run is received on a purchase order at its price, so each design's cost comes from what its runs cost, and envelopes are counted by the each.

Shops on one list. Each shop's order is a sales order, picked from one list, and margins are reported by customer.

Stock, purchase orders, reorder lists and margins are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.

Questions people also ask

How much should I charge for greeting cards?

About what card shops charge, $5 to $7 for an illustrated card, as long as it's above your floor. In the example, the floor is $2.50 and the card sells for $6.

How do you price greeting cards for wholesale?

At half the retail price, $3 for a $6 card. In the example, that leaves $1.79 a card selling to shops yourself, and $1.49 through a rep.

How do you price handmade greeting cards?

On the minutes: ten minutes and 93 cents of materials make a $3.98 card with overhead, $10 at a 55% margin.

How much does it cost to print greeting cards?

In the example, 45 cents a card in runs of 250, plus 13 cents for the envelope and sleeve. Smaller runs cost more a card.