Why the supplier price is a trap
A factory quotes you $10 a unit and it feels like your cost is $10. It is not. By the time that unit is on your shelf you have paid an ocean freight forwarder, a customs broker, an import duty, a currency-conversion spread and the cost of the box it ships in. On a cheap, bulky or heavily-taxed product, those additions routinely turn a $10 unit into a $16–18 landed cost. Price your retail off the $10 and your "50% margin" can be barely breaking even.
Landed cost is the number every downstream decision should use: your retail price, your wholesale price, your minimum order quantity, and whether a product is worth carrying at all. This tool builds it properly.
How the calculator works
Everything is entered in your supplier's currency, converted to the currency you sell in, and expressed per unit:
product + freight/units + duty/units + packaging + other fees
(each converted to your target currency)
- Freight is per order, not per unit. Each shipping tier's total cost is divided by the units in the order, so bigger loads land cheaper per unit.
- Duty is charged on the customs value (product plus freight), with an optional flat broker fee.
- The conversion fee only hits converted money. It applies to what you pay your supplier: product cost, other supplier fees and source-currency packaging. Duty and freight convert at the plain FX rate.
Check how your own spreadsheet handles the fee. Many landed-cost spreadsheets charge the currency-conversion fee on every line, including duty and freight that never leave your home currency, and their breakdowns quietly stop adding up to the total. This calculator converts each cost line independently, so the breakdown always reconciles to the landed cost and the fee lands only on money that is genuinely converted.
Reading the volume chart
Because freight and the fixed part of duty are spread across the order, per-unit landed cost falls as you buy more, until you cross into the next freight tier. The volume chart plots that curve, which is the single most useful view for setting minimum order quantities: it shows the point where ordering more stops meaningfully lowering your unit cost, and where stepping up to a pallet or container pays for itself.
Pricing DTC and wholesale off landed cost
Once the landed cost is real, pricing is a decision rather than a guess. Price each channel by a target markup, or set a fixed price and read the margin it delivers. Wholesale margins are thinner by design, because you are selling to a partner who marks it up again. Seeing DTC and wholesale side by side against the same landed cost keeps both honest. Any channel priced below landed cost is flagged, because no volume fixes a unit that loses money on every sale. To sanity-check the full per-unit P&L including payment fees, tax and CAC, run the number through our Unit Economics Calculator.
Assumptions and limitations
- You supply the FX rate. There is no live lookup; use your bank's real rate including the spread for the most accurate result.
- Duty is a single blended rate. Real tariffs vary by HS code and origin; confirm classifications with a licensed customs broker.
- One product, one order. Mixed shipments and consolidated freight across SKUs need to be apportioned before entering them here.
- Landed cost only. Storage, returns, breakage and the cost of capital tied up in inventory are not modelled.
Get the landed cost right and every pricing decision downstream gets easier. If you want help turning solid import economics into a channel and pricing strategy, that is what we do.
