🏷️ Pricing Honey for Profit

About this simulation

Two glass-jar "price stacks" show the same jar of honey sold down two different channels. Both towers are built from the same three cost bands — honey, packaging, and labour/overhead — stacked to the same height, because the cost of making a jar doesn't change with who buys it. What changes is the price on top: the retail tower prices the jar to hit your target margin, while the wholesale tower applies a trade discount to that same retail price before comparing it back against cost.

How it works

• Retail price = total cost ÷ (1 − target margin). This is the standard retailer's margin formula: margin is expressed as a share of the selling price, not a markup on cost.
• Wholesale price = retail price × (1 − trade discount). Shops and stockists typically expect a 30–50% discount off your shelf price for taking on stock risk and doing the selling.
• Because cost stays fixed but wholesale price falls, the green profit band on the wholesale tower is always shorter than retail's — and can vanish into a red "selling below cost" band if the discount is too steep for the margin you built in.
• The jars on the stand scale with the jar size you pick, as a size reference for the cost bands.

Controls

• Jar size — 227g, 340g or 454g jars; loads sensible starting costs for that size.
• Honey cost / jar — raw ingredient cost per jar.
• Packaging cost / jar — jar, lid and label combined.
• Target margin — the profit share you want baked into your retail price.
• Wholesale trade discount — the cut a shop or stockist takes off your retail price.

Did you know?

A common trap for new small producers is setting a retail price that only just covers costs at full margin — then discovering the wholesale price, after the trade discount, barely covers the jar and lid. Pricing for wholesale from the start avoids rebuilding your whole price list later.