Margin math: price from the landed number, not the listing.

The cost line, complete

A product's cost is not its listing price. The whole line is item + freight + duty + import tax (in Canada) — and then the costs that live on your side of the border: payment processing, your store's platform fees, outbound shipping to your customer, and a returns allowance. We compute the first half for you; you know the second half better than anyone. The mistake is treating the first half as optional.

A worked unit: one $29.89 product, two costs

Our dog-bed example again — item $29.89, freight $1.99, pet supplies band 3 – 15%:

Line	Band low (3%)	Band high (15%)
Item + freight	$31.88	$31.88
Duty	$0.90	$4.48
Landed cost	$32.78	$36.36
You sell at	$59.00	$59.00
Left before your own fees	$26.22 (44%)	$22.64 (38%)

Two things are visible immediately. The duty band alone swings the margin by 6 percentage points — $3.58 on one unit — which is why we publish a band rather than a single rate. And the honesty check: those percentages are what remains before payment fees, platform fees, outbound shipping and returns. If your fee stack is 10 points, the band-high case is a 28% business and the band-low case a 34% one. Price accordingly, and remember the Canadian side compounds: tax is charged on item + freight + duty and adds 5 – 15% depending on the province.

The same item, by class — where the margin actually goes

Duty varies more by category than by anything else in the calculation. On the same $29.89 item, one class costs $0.90 to import and another costs $10.46 — a $9.56 difference on a $30 product:

Class	US duty band	Duty on a $29.89 item
Apparel	16 – 35%	$4.78 – $10.46
Footwear	10 – 35%	$2.99 – $10.46
Bags & luggage	8 – 25%	$2.39 – $7.47
Jewelry	5 – 20%	$1.49 – $5.98
Sporting goods	3 – 20%	$0.90 – $5.98
Electronics, toys, home, kitchen, lighting, pet, tools, beauty, automotive	3 – 15%	$0.90 – $4.48
Furniture, office	3 – 12%	$0.90 – $3.59

The discount trap

Take the band-high case — $36.36 landed, sold at $59, 38% left. Now run a 20% promotion: $59 becomes $47.20, and $10.84 of the $22.64 margin is gone. The discount did not cost you a fifth of the margin; it cost you nearly half of it. Margin percentage falls from 38% to 23%.

That is the whole argument for pricing from the landed number. If you set a price from a "2.2× the item price" rule instead, you are deciding on a number you never checked — and the discount is what discovers it for you.

Three rules that hold up

1. Cost the whole line before you price. Item + freight + duty (+ tax in Canada). It takes seconds on the free tool, and it is the only number that tells you whether the product works.
2. Keep the band in the price. Where the class is wide, price near the top and treat the bottom as upside. Wide-band categories are where a reorder quietly turns a winner into a loss.
3. Re-check on a schedule, not a feeling. Every quote carries the as-of date of the rate table; when the date is old, run it again. The remedy layers are still moving.

For a full worked brief on one product — candidate suppliers, quantities at 10 / 100 / 1,000, unit economics and the questions to ask — the $4.99 Source Report is the next step. The sample report shows the whole thing before you buy.

Related

The four-line landed-cost recipe · Clothing & footwear: the widest duty bands · What a parcel owes the US now

Duty figures here are estimates with an accuracy promise, not a customs ruling. Rates and trade remedies are in flux — every number our tool shows carries a confidence band and an as-of date. See the sample report for exactly what you get.