The margin stack
How much of a $35 tee is profit?
On a $35 tee printed to order for a fan in the United States, $23.91 is left once the shirt, the print, the packing, the shipping and the card fee are paid. That is not yet profit, because chargebacks, returns, the store’s monthly bills and advertising all come out of it later.
One sale, to the cent
Take one sale as a sample. A fan in the United States buys a black t-shirt in a medium, with one print on the front, from an artist’s online store. The price is $35, and the store charges $4.95 for shipping on top. Nothing is in stock. A print-on-demand network prints the shirt after the order arrives, and posts it to the fan.
The seller, below, is whoever runs the store: the artist, a manager, or a company working for them.
The figures
| Line | Amount | Running total |
|---|---|---|
| The price of the tee | $35.00 | $35.00 |
| Shipping, charged to the fan | +$4.95 | $39.95 |
| The blank shirt | −$3.83 | $36.12 |
| The print | −$2.60 | $33.52 |
| Pick and pack | −$3.20 | $30.32 |
| Shipping, paid to the printer | −$4.95 | $25.37 |
| Card fee: 2.9% of $39.95, plus 30¢ | −$1.46 | $23.91 |
| Left on this sale | $23.91 | $23.91 |
A sample sale. One black tee in a medium with one print, sold to a fan in the United States at the printer’s US prices, with no sales tax due. The blank, the print and pick and pack add up to $9.63, which the printer charges as one price. How it divides is an estimate, set out in the next section.
Divini’s own dataDivini’s own costing, at the listed US prices of the print-on-demand network it uses for the shirt and for posting it. · checked
Filed or disclosedThe card fee is the standard online card rate in the United States: 2.9% of the payment, plus 30¢. · Source: Stripe, pricing, Shopify, pricing · checked
So $23.91 of the $35 is left, which is 68% of the price. The shirt, printed and packed, took $9.63. The card fee took $1.46. Shipping came in and went straight out.
That figure is what this one sale leaves, and it is not yet profit. A chargeback, a return, the store’s monthly bills and advertising are still to come, and none of them shows on a single order. This chapter takes the lines one at a time, and then the costs one sale hides.
The printer’s price is three lines in one
A print-on-demand network quotes one price for a finished shirt, and for this one it is $9.63. Its pricing page says the price covers three things: the blank product, one print, and fulfilment. It does not say how the price divides between them. Two of the three have a public price when they are bought separately, and the third is what remains.
Divini’s own dataThe network’s listed US price for a black Gildan Softstyle tee in a medium with one direct-to-garment print, and what its pricing page says that price covers. The division into three lines is Divini’s own estimate, from the public prices that follow. · checked
The blank
The blank is the plain shirt before anything is printed on it. This one is a Gildan Softstyle, a common cotton t-shirt. ShirtSpace, a wholesaler in the United States, lists the same shirt in black at $3.83 each in sizes XS to XL. A network buys far more than one shirt at a time, and what it pays is not public, so $3.83 is what the blank costs a small buyer and not what it costs the network.
Filed or disclosedThe wholesaler’s listed price without an account. · Source: ShirtSpace, Gildan G640 Softstyle T-Shirt in black · checked
Pick and pack
Pick and pack is the work of taking an order’s items off the shelf, boxing them and labelling the parcel. Warehouses that store and ship for online stores, known as 3PLs, charge for it by the order. A 2025 survey of more than 600 warehouses put the average at $3.20 for an order sent to a consumer. A 2026 guide built on that survey gives $2 to $3 as the usual range.
Third-party estimateA 3PL directory’s guide, reporting The Fulfillment Advisor’s 2025 survey. · Source: Fulfill.com, How Much Does a 3PL Cost in 2026? · checked
The print
Take the blank and the packing away from $9.63, and $2.60 is left for the print. The network prints direct-to-garment: an inkjet printer lays the ink straight onto the fabric. A design in one colour costs the printer the same as one in a thousand. What changes its cost most is the shirt, and the size of the print. A dark shirt needs a layer of white ink under the colours, and a treatment on the fabric first.
One guide for print shops, written in 2021, puts the ink for a dark shirt at 75 to 85 cents and the treatment at about 50 cents. On those figures the materials are about half of the $2.60. Whatever else a print takes has to come out of the rest: the machine, the operator, the shirts done again, and the network’s own margin.
Third-party estimateA pricing guide for direct-to-garment print shops, published in March 2021. · Source: Graphics Pro, Pricing Guide for Profitable DTG Prints · checked
The split is an estimate, and only the total is the network’s. Put the packing at the guide’s $2 and the print’s share rises to $3.80. If the network pays less for the blank than a small buyer does, more of the price is print and margin. The total does not move either way. For comparison, Printify, another large network, lists the same Gildan shirt, printed, from $10.10 before shipping.
Filed or disclosedSource: Printify, Gildan 64000 Softstyle T-Shirt · checked
Shipping in, shipping out
The network charges $4.95 to post one shirt to an address in the United States, and $2.20 for each further shirt in the same order. In the sample the store charges the fan the same $4.95. The line comes in and goes out, and nobody earns on it.
It still costs a little. The card fee is charged on everything the fan pays, shipping included, so 14 cents of the fee is for money that only passes through. A store that offers free shipping pays the $4.95 itself, and the same sale then leaves about $19.10.
The line also moves with the calendar. From 15 October to 17 January the network adds 40 cents to every order going to a US address. A store that goes on charging $4.95 is left with $23.51 on the sample for those three months.
Divini’s own dataThe network’s published shipping rates for shirts, and the surcharge its shipping page announces. · checked
The card fee
Taking a card payment online costs a percentage of the payment, plus a fixed amount. Stripe’s standard rate in the United States is 2.9% plus 30 cents. Shopify’s Basic plan quotes the same for a standard card. On the $39.95 the fan pays, that is $1.46.
Three things raise it. At Stripe, a card issued outside the United States adds 1.5 percentage points, and converting the currency adds 1 more. So at Stripe’s rates the sample order, paid in dollars with a card from abroad, would cost $2.06 in fees. And on Shopify’s Basic plan, a card that Shopify classes as premium costs 3.5% plus 30 cents.
The fixed 30 cents weighs more as the price falls. On a $5 sticker sold by itself it is 6% of the price, before the percentage is counted.
Filed or disclosedEach company’s own pricing page for businesses in the United States. · Source: Stripe, pricing, Shopify, pricing · checked
What moves the stack
Apart from the percentage in the card fee, every cost in the stack is a fixed number of dollars. So the price does most of the work. Each $5 added to the price adds just over $4.85 to what is left.
| Price | Card fee | Left on the sale | Share of the price |
|---|---|---|---|
| $25 | $1.17 | $14.20 | 57% |
| $30 | $1.31 | $19.06 | 64% |
| $35 | $1.46 | $23.91 | 68% |
| $40 | $1.60 | $28.77 | 72% |
The same shirt, shipping and card rate at each price. Shipping is charged to the fan at $4.95.
Divini’s own dataArithmetic on the sample sale. Not measured data. · checked
The shirt moves it too. Each change below alters the printer’s price for the same order, and nothing else.
| The shirt | Printer’s price | Left on the sale |
|---|---|---|
| As worked: a medium, with one print | $9.63 | $23.91 |
| The same shirt in white | $9.63 | $23.91 |
| The same shirt in 2XL | $11.63 | $21.91 |
| An inside neck label | $10.62 | $22.92 |
| A different blank, the Bella+Canvas 3001 | $11.92 | $21.62 |
| A second print, on the back | $15.58 | $17.96 |
Divini’s own dataThe network’s listed US prices for each shirt and each extra, with direct-to-garment printing. Each is in black unless the row says otherwise. · checked
On this shirt colour changes nothing: the white one costs the same as the black one, although it takes less ink. Size does. A store that charges one price for every size is left with less on the larger ones. The blank costs more in the larger size too: the wholesaler above lists the 2XL at $6.76, against $3.83 for a medium.
Filed or disclosedSource: ShirtSpace, Gildan G640 Softstyle T-Shirt in black · checked
A second print is the dearest choice on the list. A design on the back as well as the front costs $5.95 more on every shirt sold, which is a quarter of what the sample sale leaves.
Chargebacks
A chargeback is a card payment taken back by the fan’s bank after the fan disputes it. Most sales never see one. When one comes, it takes more than the sale made.
Stripe’s own pages show how. When a dispute arrives, Stripe takes back the disputed amount and adds a fee of $15. That fee is not returned, even if the seller wins. Contesting the dispute costs a further $15, which does come back on a win. Card networks typically let a cardholder open a dispute within 120 days of paying.
Filed or disclosedThe fees are Stripe’s for businesses in the United States. · Source: Stripe, pricing, Stripe, How disputes work · checked
- Left on the sale
- $23.91
- 1The fan’s payment, taken back
- −$39.95
- 2Dispute fee
- −$15.00
- 3Left after the dispute
- −$31.04
- 1The whole payment goes back, shipping included. The shirt has already been made and posted.
- 2Charged for every dispute received, won or lost.
- 3A loss. The seller has paid for the shirt, the shipping, the card fee and the dispute fee, and has been paid nothing.
Divini’s own dataArithmetic on the sample sale, at Stripe’s published dispute fee. The dispute is not contested. · Source: Stripe, pricing, Stripe, How disputes work · checked
One reversed sale turns $23.91 into a loss of $31.04. It takes the whole of the next clean sale, and about 30% of the one after, to get back to nothing.
How often it happens is each store’s own number, and no published figure for merch stores was found for this chapter. Stripe says the card industry treats disputes on more than 0.75% of payments as excessive. Even at that level the cost averages 41 cents a shirt on the sample’s figures. So it is the single dispute, not the average, that hurts a small store. The money and the law covers who has to answer one.
Filed or disclosedSource: Stripe, Measuring disputes · checked
What one sale cannot show
Some costs never appear on a single order. All of them come out of the $23.91.
- Returns and exchanges
- If a shirt arrives misprinted or damaged and the claim is made within 30 days, the network reprints or refunds it at its own cost, where the fault was its own. It gives no refund when a fan has simply changed their mind, and an exchange for another size is a new order at the seller’s expense. If the store sends the second shirt free, that is another $9.63 and another $4.95, and the sale leaves $9.33.
- The store
- Shopify’s Basic plan is $39 a month, or $29 a month paid yearly. Spread over 20 shirts a month, $39 is $1.95 a shirt. Over 200 it is about 20 cents.
- The network’s paid plan
- It is optional. It costs $24.99 a month for up to 33% off the network’s product prices, and it is free once a store sells $12,000 a year.
- Design, samples and advertising
- None of them has a price per shirt. They are paid for whether a design sells or not, which is why a stack worked on one sale looks better than the accounts for the year.
Divini’s own dataThe network’s returns policy, last updated in June 2022, and its pricing page. · checked
Filed or disclosedThe store plan’s price in the United States. · Source: Shopify, pricing · checked
Tax is a line of its own. In the United States, sales tax is added to the $35 at checkout where a state charges it, and paid over to the state. It is not the seller’s money, though the card fee is charged on it as on everything else the fan pays. In the United Kingdom the price a fan sees already includes VAT. At the standard rate of 20%, one-sixth of the price is tax for a seller registered for VAT: £5 of a £30 shirt, before any other line. Children’s clothes are zero-rated. Chapter 07 sets out who has to register and who collects.
Official sourceSource: GOV.UK, VAT rates · checked
The stack also changes with where the shirt is sold. At a merch table the shirt is printed in bulk and paid for before the tour. There is no shipping to a fan, and new lines appear: the hall fee, the person selling, and moving the stock. The merch table works one night through in the same way.
Working your own stack
The sample is one shirt at one network’s prices. The same six steps work for any product sold to order.
- Start from the price the fan sees, and add whatever the store charges for shipping.
- Take off the printer’s price for the exact item: the blank, the colour, the size and every print on it.
- Take off what the printer charges to post it to the fan’s country.
- Work the card fee on everything the fan paid, shipping included, and take it off.
- What is left is what the sale leaves. Do it again for the largest size and for an order from abroad, because those are the thin ones.
- Then set the monthly bills, the exchanges and any disputes against a month of sales, not against one.