To price a vinyl decal, cost the vinyl and transfer tape by the square inch with an allowance for waste, then add the minutes it takes to weed, tape and trim it, any design time, blade wear and packaging, and price for the margin you want after selling fees. The vinyl is the small part. In the example below, a 12-by-4-inch custom name decal uses $1.08 of vinyl and tape and $3.67 of time, costs $5.13 and sells for $11. Two decals the same size can take different minutes to weed, which is why a flat price per square inch overcharges simple designs and undercharges intricate ones. Below is the material cost, the time, what per-square-inch pricing misses, custom and bulk orders, and a free calculator.
The short version
- Vinyl and transfer tape cost a cent or two a square inch; add 20 to 30% for waste and test cuts.
- Time the weeding: it's the biggest cost.
- Custom design time belongs to the order, spread over its pieces.
- Price = cost ÷ (1 − margin − fees), rounded up.
- Price by the minutes, not only by the square inch.
- Bulk orders spread the setup; quote them per piece by quantity.
- TaroStack keeps vinyl and blanks counted and each design costed. More below.
The vinyl and tape
Cedar Lane Craft Co., a made-up craft shop in Des Moines, Iowa, I use in these examples, buys vinyl at $8 for a 12-by-60-inch roll and transfer tape at $5 for the same size:
| Material | Roll | Square inches | A square inch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vinyl | $8.00 | 720 | $0.0111 |
| Transfer tape | $5.00 | 720 | $0.0069 |
| Together | $0.0181 |
A 12-by-4 decal is 48 square inches, 87 cents of vinyl and tape. The cut never uses the whole sheet: there's a margin around each design, a test cut now and then, and the occasional decal that tears while weeding, so the shop adds 25%, which makes it $1.08. Weigh your own scraps for a month, or count the decals you remake, and use your own number.
The time is the cost
| A decal | Size | Weeding, taping, trimming | Design | Vinyl and tape | Cost | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simple name, stock font | 4 × 4 in | 4 min | $0.36 | $2.07 | $4.50 | |
| Custom name | 12 × 4 in | 6 min | 5 min | $1.08 | $5.13 | $11.00 |
| Intricate car decal, shop design | 10 × 5 in | 15 min | $1.13 | $6.51 | $14.00 |
Each cost adds the time at $20 an hour, 8 cents of blade and mat wear, and 30 cents of backing card and sleeve. Each price is the cost divided by (1 − 45% margin − 8% selling fees), rounded up to a quarter. On the car decal, 15 minutes of weeding is $5, more than four times the vinyl. How to put your own time into a price is in how to price handmade items.
What a price per square inch misses
Some shops price decals by the square inch or the square foot, which is quick to quote. It works for designs that take about the same time to weed, and fails when they don't. Two 10-by-5 decals at 22 cents a square inch both sell for $11:
| A 10 × 5 decal | Bold lettering | Intricate design |
|---|---|---|
| Weeding, taping, trimming | 5 min | 15 min |
| Cost | $3.18 | $6.51 |
| Left at $11, after 8% fees | $6.94 | $3.61 |
| Cost-based price, 45% margin | $7.00 | $14.00 |
The bold lettering could sell for $7 and still leave the margin; the intricate design needs $14. A per-square-inch rate can still be the quick quote, with a surcharge for detailed designs. How cost-plus pricing works is in cost plus pricing example.
Custom and bulk orders
Design time is spent once per order: five minutes setting a customer's name is $1.67 on one decal and 17 cents a decal over ten. A business logo cut in quantity has the same arithmetic, with about 15 minutes to set up the file, test the cut and lay out the sheet:
| 3 × 3 logo decals | Cost a decal | Price a decal |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | $1.55 | $3.50 |
| 25 | $1.25 | $2.75 |
| 50 | $1.15 | $2.50 |
Bulk logos ship in one bag rather than on their own cards, so packaging is 10 cents a decal. A shop or café that resells your decals needs room for its own margin; how to set a wholesale price is in how to price handmade items for wholesale.
Get the calculator
Download the vinyl decal pricing calculator. Type what a roll of vinyl and a roll of transfer tape cost and their size, your waste allowance, the decal's size, the minutes to weed, tape and trim one, the design and setup minutes for the order and how many decals are in it, your hourly rate, blade and mat wear, packaging, selling fees and the margin you want. It works out the material, the time, the cost of a decal, its price rounded up to a quarter, and the order. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
Vinyl in thirty colors and three finishes, transfer tape, heat transfer vinyl and shirt blanks in every size, a catalog of designs that sell all year, and custom orders from markets, an online shop and local businesses. A sheet can't say whether there's enough matte black for this week's orders, which colors are running low, or which designs earn their weeding time.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps vinyl and blanks counted and every design costed.
Vinyl and blanks in stock. Each vinyl color, tape and blank is an item, counted on a phone and kept at what you paid, and units convert: vinyl bought by the roll, used by the foot.
Designs as recipes. Each catalog design is a recipe of its vinyl, tape and backing card, so recording a run takes them off stock at what you paid and gives the cost a decal. Business orders are sales orders that show whether the vinyl or blanks 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, so popular colors don't run out mid-order, and margins are reported by product and by customer.
| The job | Notebook | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Enough matte black for this week? | Unroll and measure | Stock by item, counted on a phone |
| Colors running low | Found mid-cut | The reorder list, in days |
| What a design really costs | A guess | Each run, at what it used |
| Which designs earn their time? | A feeling | Margins by product |
Recipes, batches, sales orders, 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.