How to Price Clothing for Your Boutique

Pricing for your clothing brand is not an easy decision to make. You have to consider every detail. One of your priorities has to be covering the cost of buying wholesale clothing. But you also have to consider future scenarios like what if you cannot sell your whole inventory and have to apply a discount. So as you can see pricing for a retail store can be more complicated than you think.
If boutique pricing strategy is not done based on a researched strategy, you may lose money and even go to bankruptcy in a short period. If you set the prices way too high for your customers, you cannot sell anything and suffer from excess inventory.
If you were following a niche marketing strategy like selling unique clothes from unique categories, pricing in your clothing line could be more flexible. Since people would focus on the rarity and uniqueness of your items, they would likely pay more and be less price sensitive. However, those boutiques are not as common as other boutiques that sell casual clothing. That is why; in this blog, we share with you the core pricing tactics that every casual-dressing boutique owner needs to know.
Let's explore the topics we'll cover in this blog:
Wholesale Markups
Use .99 pricing/charm pricing
1. Wholesale Markups
Markup is the amount that you add to your cost for the product. As a person who work in fashion, your priority should be covering your cost to get a profit margin. 
As you can see in the figure above; on average, purchasing covers approximately 50 percent of the total revenue. So, to achieve this, you have to have at least a 100 percent markup for merchandises in your clothing brand. For example, if you buy wholesale blouses and it costs you 10 dollars per blouse; you have to set your price higher or equal to 20 dollars.
However, putting a 100 percent markup while pricing your clothing will give you only 1.2% of profit which is almost nothing compared to your efforts in the selling process. So, what you need to do now is to put a good profit margin for your clothing after calculating all your costs. A good profit margin for clothing is 30% to 50%. 
You need to keep in mind that a reasonable price tag on the products in your clothing brand is one of the most important decision-making element that will make people buy from your business or keep your existing customer loyal. Therefore, don't forget that your profit margin may vary depending on your customers and your products.
Besides, here is another tip for you; if you believe that the piece you have is worth even more than double its cost, you can increase it as much as people would pay. Let’s say you have a beautiful, stylish, very high-quality shirt that you bought for 15 dollars. Due to our logic, you should sell the shirt for 30 dollars. However, the fabric and the design are so fascinating that you believe it is worth more than 30 dollars. If this is the case, you can set your price and add a couple of more dollars to the price tag.
You do not have to set a 100 percent markup price for every piece in your retail store. For example, if some clothing has higher costs and doubling them sounds risky to you, you can set a lower markup than 100 percent. However, you have to find a balance as a whole to 100 percent.
100 percent is the safe side for increasing your profit margin and keeping your place in the market. But, as your number of customers increases, you can conduct some pricing tests. 
As you may have noticed, the price is highly correlated with your cost. So, the less costly your inventory of your clothing line, the higher chance for you to make a profit. As Lonca, we bring you wholesale clothing vendors in Turkey together under one online marketplace at the best price. Since manufacturing costs are lower in Turkey, you save a good amount by buying wholesale clothing from Turkish suppliers. Besides that, clothing carries high quality. There are broad scale options of stylish, trendy products on our website. It makes it easier for you to apply a markup that is higher than 100 percent.
If you want to learn more about why you can buy better quality wholesale clothing from Turkey at better prices you can read this blog post.
2. Use .99 pricing/charm pricing
You might have noticed that the pricing of various items ends with 9 almost every day at different locations. Let us tell you, it is not a coincidence, and you should also apply this tactic in your boutique. This strategy even has a name that is called ‘charm price’. Charm price reflects the left-digit effect, that is our brain is more prone to detect the left digits.
In the experiments conducted by the University of Chicago and MIT, women's clothing was used to test the left-digit effect. The use of a $9 price ending increased demand in all three experiments. (1) So, while pricing the items you have, choose the numbers that end with 9. For example, If you set the price for a shirt at 19 dollars, people would perceive that it is around 10 dollars even though it is one dollar away from 20 dollars. Moreover, the same effect continues for the decimals such as 4,99. To your brain, 4,99 is 4,00 which is cheaper than 5,00.
How to Price Clothing in Fashion
To sum up, pricing for a clothing brand is very crucial for your boutique. With this blog, we compiled fundamental tips and techniques for pricing for your boutique. You have to set your markup at least 100 percent so that you do not get a loss. 
Also, the cost of buying wholesale clothing has a direct effect on your pricing. That is why you have to find yourself good supplies that offer you the best prices with good quality. 
Also, using charm pricing will be very beneficial for you. We hope this blog has helped you to figure out the right ways to price your clothing for your boutique.