What a wholesale stationery order costs

A wholesale order is simpler to price than most people expect: pieces × the tier rate, plus shipping, paid in full at checkout. There is no design fee on a wholesale order, no customs, and no per-order platform surcharge to the buyer. This guide walks a full order line by line and then does the margin maths a shop reselling it would want.

The figures here are illustrative. Every seller sets their own tier ladder and shipping, so these are worked examples showing how the arithmetic goes, not a price list. The rates on the listing are the real ones.

The line items

Line	How it's set
Pieces × tier rate	Your quantity, at whichever tier breakpoint it reaches
Shipping	The speed you pick at checkout: Standard (included), Priority (+$8), Express (+$18) — per-shop, these are the defaults
Design fee	None on wholesale. The 20%/$6 design fee applies to one-off personalized orders, not bulk runs
Duties / customs	None — the marketplace ships to US addresses only, priced in USD

That's the whole bill. Paid in full when you place the order.

A worked order

Take a listing with this ladder — the same one used in the wholesale ordering guide:

Quantity	Per piece
50 – 99	$2.40
100 – 249	$2.10
250+	$1.85

Ordering 100 pieces with standard shipping:

100 × $2.10	$210.00
Standard shipping	included
Order total	$210.00
Landed cost per piece	$2.10

Now the same order at the minimum, 50 pieces:

50 × $2.40	$120.00
Landed cost per piece	$2.40

Half the pieces for 57% of the money. That's the whole point of a tier ladder, and it's why the smallest order is rarely the cheapest decision.

The breakpoint trap

Look at what happens either side of a breakpoint:

Order	Rate	Total	Per piece
90 pieces	$2.40	$216.00	$2.40
100 pieces	$2.10	$210.00	$2.10

Ten more pieces for six dollars less. Ordering 90 costs more in absolute terms than ordering 100 and leaves you with fewer units to sell.

Before you commit to a quantity, look at the next breakpoint up. If it's close, it is almost always worth reaching. This is the single easiest saving on the page and the easiest to miss.

Shipping and landed cost

Shipping is a flat surcharge by speed, so it spreads across the run. That means it hurts small orders and effectively disappears on large ones.

Paying $8 for Priority on a 50-piece order adds $0.16 a piece. The same $8 on a 250-piece order adds $0.03. If you're comparing landed cost between two makers, compare it after shipping and at the quantity you'd actually order — not on the headline rate.

Margin maths for a reselling shop

If you're buying to resell, the number that matters is landed cost per piece — pieces plus shipping, divided by pieces.

At the 100-piece example above, landed cost is $2.10.

Retail price	Gross margin per piece	Margin %
$4.20 (keystone, 2×)	$2.10	50%
$5.00	$2.90	58%
$6.00	$3.90	65%

Standard retail keystone is a 2× markup, giving 50%. Stationery frequently carries more than that, because a customer judges a $6 notepad on how it looks in the hand rather than on a unit-cost comparison they can run in their head.

Two things to fold in before you settle on a shelf price: reaching a better tier lowers landed cost and widens every column above, and the pieces are personalized with your name, which means they aren't price-comparable against the same item elsewhere. That's the practical argument for private label over stocking a design a hundred other shops also carry.

What your money is at risk against

Worth knowing before a large order, because it's specific: a wholesale order is fully refundable until the seller starts your print run, and non-refundable once production starts. Not once you order, not once proofs are exchanged — once the press starts. Your order page shows when that happened.

Damaged, defective, wrong and lost orders are covered regardless. Full detail in how wholesale ordering works and the returns policy.

Cost checklist before ordering

• Check the next tier breakpoint — the step up is often cheaper in total.
• Compare landed cost, not headline rate — include shipping, at your real quantity.
• Pick shipping on need, not habit — express on a large run is cheap per piece; on 50 pieces it's most of your margin.
• Confirm no design fee applies — it shouldn't on a wholesale listing; if a listing sells single pieces it's retail, and the design-fee rules apply instead.
• Know your production start date — that's the moment the money stops being refundable.