Dye Sublimation is the process of transferring artwork onto a mug, I covered this in more detail over on my introduction to dye sublimation. This article I will go over the way I price my mugs and the best way to remain competitive without working for peanuts.
What do I charge for Printed Mugs?
Pricing is always tricky, you start cheap and you have little profit and no ability to offer discounts for large repeat orders. Charge too much and you’ve priced yourself out of the market and will be sat twiddling your thumbs as your printer nozzles block up due to lack of usage.
Personally, I prefer to go down the “Premium” approach of mugs where I know I can offer my customers discounts such as free shipping, or buy 3 get the 4th free.
Customers want value, and value comes not only from the mug itself, but from the feeling of “I saved £10!”. Completely unrelated but recently I had 8 bottles of beer in my basket, I wanted the beer, I loved the beer and I would be buying the beer… but I didn’t. Then one day I saw that the beer was 10% off – I purchased 2x immediately.
The end result was the same, I had the beer, but I saved 10%.. which makes me feel super happy.
If the beer was already discounted, I may have bought it, but more than likely I would have held off for longer (usually until the price goes back up and I kick myself!).
The same completely applies to large Print-to-Order websites like Zazzle
Cost in your Time
I see it very often with new businesses where they price their dye sublimation mugs purely based on materials alone and wonder why they seem to be working 12 hour days but have little to show for it. Your price should always take into account:
- Mug Cost
- Ink Costs
- Paper Cost
- Electric Cost
- Labour Cost
- Transaction Fees
Which is why I am writing right now, too often we work for nothing and I have been very guilty of that in the past – not anymore.
What type of Printed Mug are you selling?
Off the Shelf Designs
Off the shelf designs like above require little to no effort to print and produce are your money earners. There is no doubt about it, you can automate the complete process:
- Receive Order from your Website
- Automatically Print the Artwork
- Wrap the Mug
- Print the Mug
- Ship the Mug
These products should be made on complete autopilot and should be the foundation of your business and therefore you can play around with prices and promotions.
Personalised Mugs
Personalised mugs take more time. You are required to work with the customer, send proofs, make revisions, send more proofs and it’s very difficult to make money. Back when I ran a shop in Nottinghamshire, I would charge £10 for personalised mugs (we’re going back about 18+ years now).
Customers would bring in their photos and I would write down the text they wanted. I then needed to design the mug, scan the image, colour correct the image and make the mug hoping I understood exactly what the customer wanted.
Most of the time the customer was super happy, but there were a few occasions where the customer crunched up their face and made comments like “hmmm, I thought the photo would be clearer” or “The text, Its too red” (yes..too red).
£10 did not cover my time, but I ran with it for several months on the basis that they may come back and order a mouse mat, or another mug where I could maximise my profit.
How to calculate your Profit on Dye Sublimation Mugs
I’m going to show you my way of calculating profit for “off the shelf” designs which require little effort into making money from printed mugs. For the purpose of this, I will be using VAT inclusive prices as most new businesses will not be registered.
| Cost of Mug | £1.20 |
| Cost Per Sheet of Transfer Paper (divided by 3 for 3 mugs per sheet) | £0.50 |
| Ink Cost per Sheet of Transfer Paper (Full Wrap Photo divided by 3) | £0.50 |
| Electricity Cost for Mug Press | 5p |
| Total Cost Per Mug | £2.25 |
What about Labour Costs?
Labour costs vary, but lets work on the UK Average Salary of £629 per week (correct as of 12/3/2024) – source. Which calculates to £125 per day.
Lets say 1 person can make 50 mugs in a day, that’s £125 / 50 = £2.50 labour costs per mug.
Our single printed mug now costs £4.75 to produce.
Packaging / Shipping
Nobody likes to receive just a mug, so we need to calculate the price of packaging and shipping. The price for packaging and display mug boxes is about the same at around 50p-90p per box. Our mug now costs £5.50 to produce.
Shipping mugs varies with Couriers charging from £4.99 to the Royal Mail charging £3.29.
If you were to offer free shipping the total cost is now around £10-£11 per mug.
Costing in the “oh sh*t I made a mistake”
I don’t think I’ve ever had a week where I didn’t make a mistake, whether it’s my fault, the equipment or a member of staff – mistakes are going to happen and you need to cost these in. For this, I use the base cost of a mug of £2.25, meaning my mug costs are now at £10.25 per mug.
If you never make a mistake, then you’re making money, but it’s nice to know you do have a form of contingency if the worst was to happen.
£11 cost per mug – I can’t make any profit with that!
When you break down the costs it does seem that money cannot be made when selling Dye Sublimated mugs, but I am here to tell you that you can and it all comes down to what I originally spoke about in my first paragraph (if you skipped to this, then you might want to click back up).
It’s all about upselling and cross selling your products.
Like this mug? Buy the matching coaster set!
If a customer is already purchasing 1 mug, they are already in a position where you can show them similar designs and products to encourage upselling.
How can I reduce my Mug Production Costs?
Batch Production!
Batch Production is what I used when I started making mugs in my spare bedroom. I made a point of only making mugs 1 day per week and my customers all knew that.
I would collect all the orders from the previous week and make, pack and ship on a Thursday. This allowed me to focus my time the other 6 days per week to increasing my orders, creating new designs, marketing my designs and working on my website.
As my Mug Business grew, I started making mugs 2 days per week: Monday & Thursday, which still left me plenty of time to work on my website, create new products, new designs etc.
Bulk Discounts
As mentioned previously, offering discounts encourages your customer to purchase your mug and is a great way of upselling. You can negotiate deals with suppliers for large orders of supplies and you should use them as much as possible to maximise your profits:
- Buying more than 1 box of 36 mugs can often save you 10%
- Buying 100+ Shipping Boxes can reduce your packaging costs by up to 30%
- Buying more than a single pack of Transfer paper can create discounts of 10%
- Shipping 10 mugs is not 10x the cost of shipping a single mug = saving money
Plus, it’s really easy to produce 50 mugs with the same design on than it is producing 50 different pieces.
Bulk Ink systems
Bulk Ink systems can massively reduce your printer running costs. I plan to have an article on this very soon. You can see savings of over 50% on your running costs by ordering dye sublimation ink in bulk.
Final Thoughts
If you’ve got this far then I congratulate you. It’s often a tough pill to swallow knowing that pricing your mugs at less than £10 is not going to make your rich, however having a few “cheaper” designs may help in getting interest in your products – there is no better marketing than word of mouth.
Obviously the price guide I have provided above looks at the assumptions that this is your sole income and you’re paying somebody to make the mugs for you. If you’re already making an income, pricing at a lower price will reduce your profit margin and make an ideal side business.
