There is no single “good” profit margin that works for every makeup brush brand, because margin has to cover your landed cost, your selling channel, and the way you acquire customers. A set sold on a brand’s own site, a set sold on a marketplace, and a set sold into a retailer do not have the same fee stack. Build a simple cost sheet from a real factory quote, add freight and import costs, add the fees of your channel, and then test whether a price you can live with is a price customers will pay.
This is general business guidance, not financial advice, and it does not cite or invent industry-average margins.
Start from landed cost, not from the factory unit price
The number on an EXW or FOB quotation is not your cost to sell a brush. Add freight, insurance, duties and other import charges that apply, payment fees, inspections, inner packing you paid for separately, and a share of sampling and tooling. Divide reasonably across the units you expect to sell, including a provision for damaged or unsellable pieces.
Until that landed-cost figure exists, a discussion of margin is guesswork. Two brands can pay a similar factory price and end up with very different costs if one ships a small carton by air and the other consolidates by sea, or if one sells DDP and the other handles customs itself.
Use the same currency and the same unit (per piece or per set) throughout the sheet.
Different channels take different slices
If you sell on your own site, you may pay payment processing, shipping to the customer, and your own advertising. If you sell on a marketplace, you may pay referral or fulfillment fees on top of ads. If you wholesale to a retailer, they will need a margin too, and you will be pricing off a wholesale list rather than a direct retail price.
A margin that looks comfortable on a direct sale can disappear on a marketplace after fees and returns. A margin that looks thin at wholesale can still be a healthy business if the retailer orders in volume and you spend less on ads — or it can be too thin if you still have to fund promotions. There is no chart that settles this without your own numbers.
Write the channel fees into the same cost sheet. Do not invent a single target percentage and force every channel to fit it.
What “enough” margin has to do
After the visible fees, the remainder has to contribute to photography, customer service, replacements, packaging design, the next sample round, and your time. If the leftover only covers the landed cost and nothing else, the line is not yet a business; it is a break-even hobby at best.
Returns and “not as pictured” complaints are more likely if you skipped sampling or QC. Quality failures are a margin problem as well as a reputation problem.
Price also has to make sense to the customer next to the finish, the packing, and the story you can honestly tell. A beautifully made set in a cheap bag, or a sparse brush in a heavy gift box, can be hard to price because the product and the presentation disagree.
A practical way to set the first prices
1. Get a factory quote on a locked specification and Incoterm. 2. Estimate landed cost with a freight quote and official duty information for your market (or a broker). 3. Add the fees of the first channel you will actually use. 4. Choose a retail or wholesale price you are willing to test, and see what is left. 5. If the remainder is too small, change the product (packing, SKU count, construction), the channel, or the price — and be explicit about which lever you pulled.
Do not copy a competitor’s retail price and assume their cost stack is the same as yours. You do not know their factory terms, their ad spend, or whether they are selling at a loss to get reviews.
Review after the first order
Your first shipment will teach you the real freight, the real defect rate, and the real return rate. Update the sheet before you book the second production run. If you expand into another country, redo duties and shipping; do not reuse the first margin as if it were a constant.
A “good” margin is one you can repeat with numbers you have actually seen, not a round percentage you heard was standard.
FAQ
Is keystone (doubling the cost) a safe rule?
Doubling a factory price often underestimates landed cost and selling fees, or it can overprice a simple item. Use a full cost sheet rather than a single rule of thumb.
Should I aim for the same margin on every SKU?
Not necessarily. A hero foundation brush and a small liner may need different prices, even in one set, as long as the set and the line work as a whole.
When should I raise the price instead of cheapening the brush?
When the sample you believe in cannot be made for the price you had hoped. It is better to sell a smaller quantity of a brush that performs than to cut density or packing until the product no longer matches the listing.
Do duties belong in margin math?
Yes, if you pay them. Check current official tariff information or a licensed broker for your exact goods and origin; do not copy a rate from an old blog post.