How to Price Leather Goods: Hide, Hours, Calculator

To price leather goods, cost the leather by the square foot for what the pattern uses, with an allowance for the parts of the hide you can't use, add thread, hardware, edge paint and dye and the box, then the minutes to cut, stitch, burnish and finish, and price for the margin you want after selling fees. Leather looks like the expensive part; on hand-stitched goods, the hours are. In the example below, a hand-stitched card wallet uses $3.75 of leather, costs $19.75 and sells for $41; a bifold wallet is $132, a belt $70 and a keychain $10. Below is the leather, what each piece costs, prices, hand and machine stitching, custom work, and a free calculator.

The short version

• Cost leather by the square foot for what the pattern uses, plus about 25% for hide waste.
• Add thread, hardware, edge paint and dye, and packaging.
• Time cutting, stitching, burnishing and finishing; it's most of the cost.
• Price = cost ÷ (1 − margin − fees), rounded up to a dollar.
• Cut and finish in batches; small goods cost far less made ten at a time.
• Price custom work from the hours, with a deposit for the hide.
• TaroStack keeps hides, hardware and thread counted and every design costed. More below.

The leather

Big Sioux Leather Co., a made-up leather shop in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, I use in these examples, buys vegetable-tanned leather at about $10 a square foot, and heavier belt leather at $12. A hide is irregular, with a thin belly, scars and brands, and the pieces of a pattern never fit it perfectly, so the shop adds 25% to the leather a pattern uses. Measure it once for each design: cut a set of pieces, note the square footage of the area they came from, and write it down.

What each piece costs

The bifold's two and a half hours are mostly saddle stitching by hand, two needles through every hole, plus cutting, skiving, edge work and burnishing. The belt's buckle costs almost as much as its leather. How to put your own time into a price is in how to price handmade items.

Prices

Each price is the cost divided by (1 − 0.45 − 0.06), rounded up to a dollar. Ten card wallets cut in one session, dyed and edged together and stitched in a run, take about 30 minutes each instead of 45, which takes the price from $41 to $31. A shop that resells your work needs room for its own margin, so batch-made designs are the ones to offer wholesale; how to set that price is in how to price handmade items for wholesale.

Hand or machine stitching

A leather sewing machine stitches a card wallet in minutes, where hand saddle stitching takes most of the half hour. The machine costs money up front and the stitch is different, a lock stitch rather than a saddle stitch, which some buyers pay more for and others don't notice. Run the calculator both ways: if machine stitching takes the bifold from 2.5 hours to 1.25, its cost falls by $25 and its price by about $50, and the machine is paid for by the hours it saves. How cost-plus pricing works is in cost plus pricing example.

Custom work

A custom piece, a monogram, a wallet to someone's measurements, a belt in a particular hide, costs more than the standard design: extra minutes, and sometimes leather bought for one job. Quote it from the calculator with the real hours and the leather at what you'll pay, set a minimum, and take a deposit that covers the leather before cutting.

Get the calculator

Download the leather goods pricing calculator. Type how many square feet a piece uses and what the leather costs, your waste allowance, thread, hardware, edge paint and dye, packaging, the minutes to cut, stitch, burnish and finish, your hourly rate, selling fees and the margin you want. It works out the leather, materials, time, the cost of a piece, its price rounded up to a dollar, and what's left. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

Hides in four colors and three weights, buckles and snaps in brass and nickel, thread by the spool, twenty designs, and custom orders with deposits. A sheet can't say how much of the tan hide is left, which buckles to reorder, or which designs earn their hours.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack keeps hides, hardware and thread counted and every design costed.

Hides and hardware in stock. Each leather, buckle, snap and thread is an item, counted on a phone and kept at what you paid, and units convert: leather bought by the hide, used by the square foot.

Designs as recipes. Each design is a recipe of its leather, with scrap allowed for, thread, hardware and box, so recording a batch takes them off stock at what you paid and gives the cost of each piece. Custom and shop orders are sales orders that show whether the leather and hardware are on the shelf while you're still typing.

And what each design earns. The reorder list works in days of cover against each supplier's lead time, and margins are reported by product and by customer.

Recipes, batches, sales orders 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.

Questions people also ask

How much should I charge for a leather wallet?

Cost the leather, thread, edge finish, box and your hours, then divide by one minus your margin and fees. In the example, a hand-stitched card wallet costing $19.75 sells for $41, and a bifold costing $64.60 for $132.

How do you price handmade leather goods?

Leather by the square foot with an allowance for waste, plus hardware and finishes, plus your time, priced for your margin. In the example, the time is most of the cost on every hand-stitched piece.

How much leather do I need for a wallet?

The example's card wallet uses about 0.3 square feet and the bifold about 1 square foot, plus 25% for the parts of the hide that can't be used. Measure your own pattern once.

How much should I charge for a leather belt?

In the example, $70 for a belt with 0.45 square feet of belt leather, a $6 buckle and rivets, and an hour of work, costing $34.05.