I am trying to determine if and by how much I should mark up supplies like pads, boxes, etc...

I know some people don't mark them up, but considering shipping costs, time, etc. I don't think it's unreasonable to do a small mark-up.

So if you do mark up, what is your percentage?

Thanks!

Are you asking about marking them up b/c you're selling these items direct to the public? (or your customers)

Or are you just talking about marking them up when using them in cakes? They are just part of my cost of making a cake so i guess yes, technically i mark them up, but i can't give you a specific percentage because i mark up all of my supplies and my time so i make a profit.

Yes, using them in cakes.

I am in the process of pricing my cakes now. I am not selling these supplies directly, just trying to figure if I should mark them up slightly before adding them into the cost of the cake. If I don't, technically I would take a loss when you consider shipping costs, a small loss, but still a loss. I am guess somewhere between 2% and 10%??? Just not sure what is not enough and what is too much.

Shipping is part of the cost of supplies, so of course add it in! If you ordered 100 boards for $20 and the shipping was $5 then you don't figure the cost of each board off of the $20, you do it of fof the total $25 because that is what it cost you to get them.

my though is that my shipping costs vary per order so the most accurate I could get is to do a percent increase on all supplies used specifically for the cake itself.

I'd consider this alot like pricing things out when they aren't on sale and using that number in your per cost numbers. That way if you are get it on sale you make a little extra money on the order and if you don't then you don't lose out.

I'd figure it based off of if you just had to have them shipped alone to you, and couldn't spread the shipping costs out among other items. Because there may be a time when you have to do that.

In the example above, there is just a .05 cent difference. If 100 boxes cost you $20 then they are .20 a box. If it costs you $25 (with shipping including), then you are looking at .25 a box. Even if you have to pay $30 for the box of 100, that is only .30 a box. You could even round it up to .50 a box to cover any shipping situations if you wanted to.

In the end I'd round numbers up anyway, to work with more even numbers, I wouldn't stress over the pennies so much.

I was going to say the same thing as TexasSugar. You price your stuff for worst case scenario (that you're paying the highest price you have too) so that if you do have to pay the highest price then you aren't loosing money, but when you find things on sale or are able to order lots of things and spread the shipping out then you're making extra money.