Gift Baskets - Need Advice

[Brian]

This board is full of a lot of people with a wide range of knowledge. I was wondering if someone could give my some advise?

I have a customer that wants me to do 30 Gift Baskets for them. I have never done gift baskets, but hey, who is going to turn down an order in this day and age.

Questions is: What should the value of products be? (including the basket, cello-wrap, ribbon and other filler)

So if I am selling the basket for $100. Should the cost of everything be $90, 80, 70, 60, 50?? So that there is money left to cover the labour for making them, gas for getting everything together, as well as delivery and other incidentals.

[Happy]

As a long-time retailer I can tell you the retail price is typically double the cost except on hard goods like electronics. Mark-up is a lot lower on that. Make sure you pay yourself! And remember that if you set your price too low and this customer wants 100 of these baskets next year then you're going to have a very hard time explaining a price increase and may be stuck.

[Ontario Chick]

Happy pretty much covered it all.
Make sure you know how much the customer wants to pay per basket and calculate backwards.
Also deposit is a good idea, to the tune of cost of materials you have to purchase, protects you from being stuck in case a customer fails to pick up their order.

[Brian]

Thanks. I was thinking along the same lines. I just want to make sure I make as much $ as possible while still making the customer satisfied.