To price a laser engraved item, add the blank, its share of the design and setup time for the order, the laser's time, your hands-on time and the packaging, then set a price that leaves your margin after selling fees. The laser itself is cheap to run, under a dollar an hour in the example. What changes the price is setup: a personalized cutting board with one name on it carries all 15 minutes of design and alignment on its own, while ten identical boards share them. In the example below, a personalized bamboo board costs $17.18 to make and sells for $36.75; the same board in a run of ten costs $12.68 and sells for $27; a set of four slate coasters sells for $24.25 and a logo keychain in an order of 100 for $2.25. Below is what goes into the cost, four examples, how to price personalization, and a free calculator.
The short version
- Blank: the board, tumbler, coaster or keychain, at what you paid.
- Design and setup: the minutes to lay out the text or logo, test, and align the first piece, spread over the order.
- Laser time: minutes at the machine's cost an hour, about 88 cents in the example.
- Hands-on time: loading, aligning, cleaning off residue and packing each piece.
- Price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − selling fees), rounded up.
- Personalized one-offs carry all the setup; price them higher, or charge setup separately.
- TaroStack keeps blanks counted and costs every job from what it used. More below.
What goes into the cost
Bright Line Engraving, a made-up laser engraving shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I use in these examples, sells personalized gifts online and at markets and takes logo orders from local businesses.
The laser's hour. A $4,000 laser that lasts about 8,000 hours wears out at 50 cents an hour. Lenses, mirrors and repairs, about $300 a year over 1,000 engraving hours, add 30 cents. The laser and exhaust fan drawing half a kilowatt on power at 15 cents a kilowatt hour add about 8 cents. That's about 88 cents an hour, less than a cent and a half a minute.
Design and setup. Typing a name, choosing a font, sizing it to the blank, a test burn on scrap, and aligning the first piece take about 15 minutes for a personalized order in the example. That time is the same whether the order is one piece or ten.
Hands-on time. Loading, aligning each piece, wiping residue, a quick inspection and packing, about 6 minutes for a cutting board.
| A personalized cutting board | Cost |
|---|---|
| Bamboo board blank | $9.00 |
| Design and setup, 15 minutes at $20 an hour | $5.00 |
| Laser time, 12 minutes | $0.18 |
| Hands-on time, 6 minutes | $2.00 |
| Packaging | $1.00 |
| Full cost | $17.18 |
With selling fees of 8% and a 45% margin wanted after them, the price is $17.18 ÷ (1 − 0.45 − 0.08) = $36.54, rounded up to $36.75. How to put your own time into any price is in how to price handmade items.
Four examples
| Each item | Board, personalized | Board, run of 10 | Slate coasters, set of 4, run of 20 sets | Logo keychain, order of 100 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blank | $9.00 | $9.00 | $8.00 | $0.60 |
| Design and setup, its share | $5.00 | $0.50 | $0.25 | $0.10 |
| Laser time | $0.18 | $0.18 | $0.23 | $0.01 |
| Hands-on time | $2.00 | $2.00 | $1.33 | $0.17 |
| Packaging | $1.00 | $1.00 | $1.50 | $0.10 |
| Full cost | $17.18 | $12.68 | $11.32 | $0.98 |
| Price, rounded up to a quarter | $36.75 | $27.00 | $24.25 | $2.25 |
The laser time is never more than a few cents. The blank and the minutes around the laser are the cost; and for a personalized piece, the setup is nearly a third of it.
Pricing personalization
The same board costs $4.50 more to make, and sells for $9.75 more, when it's personalized for one person instead of engraved in a run. Two ways to show it on a menu:
- A personalized price. Board $27 with a stock design; $36.75 with a name. Customers see the difference as the personalization.
- A setup fee. $27 a board plus a setup fee for each new design, which also makes a bigger order cheaper per piece, the right message for a business ordering 50.
Logo orders work the second way: one setup, a hundred pieces, and the price per piece falls with the quantity. How a price is built up from cost, with examples, is in cost plus pricing example, and setting prices for shops that resell your pieces is in how to price handmade items for wholesale.
Get the calculator
Download the laser engraving pricing calculator. Type your job into the shaded cells: the blank, design and setup minutes for the order and how many items are in it, laser and hands-on minutes for each, packaging, your hourly rate, the laser's price and life, repairs, hours a year, power, selling fees and the margin you want. It works out the laser's cost an hour, the full cost of one item, its price rounded up to a quarter, and the whole order. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
A shop with forty kinds of blanks, from bamboo boards to tumblers in eight colors, buys them by the case from four suppliers, and the busy season is November and December. A tumbler color sells out the week before a holiday rush, nobody knows what the last case of boards cost, and a logo order for 100 keychains takes the blanks a gift order needed.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps the blanks counted and every job costed.
Blanks in stock. Each blank is an item, counted on a phone and kept at what you paid, and units convert: blanks bought by the case, used one at a time. A product is a recipe of its blank and packaging.
Jobs at what they used. Recording a job takes the blanks and packaging off stock at what you paid, so its cost follows the price of the last case, and margins are reported by product and by customer.
And the blanks before the rush. Orders are sales orders that show whether the blanks to fill them are on the shelf while you're still typing, and the reorder list works in days of cover against each supplier's lead time, so the popular tumbler colors are ordered before December.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Blanks for a 100-piece logo order | Count the shelf | Sales order, checked against stock |
| What the last case of boards cost | Find the invoice | Stock at what you paid |
| Tumbler colors before December | Found sold out | The reorder list, in days |
| Personalized or stock, which pays? | A guess | Margins by product |
Recipes, batches, counting and margins by product and customer 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.