Markdown Margin Check
The StickerWhat the sale does to the margin, against the floor you set.
Margin is on the price and markup is on the cost, and everybody says them interchangeably. So a sale gets set on a number nobody has worked out, on a rail where the cost lives in one system and the price lives on the tag.
A markdown gets decided in front of a rail, in whole dollars off the sticker. What it does to the margin is a different number in the owner’s head every time, because the cost is in a different system from the price. This puts them together, line by line, and names every one that drops through the floor.
About this tool
Markdown Margin Check: what it solves
The arithmetic is one subtraction and a division and it still does not get done, because the cost and the price are never in the same place. This holds both and shows what each line makes at the new price, what its margin becomes, and which lines have dropped under the floor the shop set — a floor that comes from a particular rent and a particular staff, so two shops on the same street will not share one. The refusal is the important half. The real cost of a markdown is the margin given up on units that would have sold anyway, less the margin gained on units that only sold because of the sticker. The second half of that needs a counterfactual about a week that did not happen, and nothing a shop holds contains it. Every markdown calculator answers it anyway by quietly assuming either that nothing extra sells or that everything does. This one states the refusal on the page and shows only the two figures it can stand behind.
The refusal is the important half of this one
Every markdown calculator will tell you what a sale cost you. This one tells you why that number cannot be known, and then shows you the two figures that can.
The real cost of a markdown is the margin you gave up on the units that would have sold anyway, less the margin you gained on the units that only sold because of the sticker.
The first half is arithmetic. The second half needs to know what would have happened in a week that did not happen — and nothing your shop holds contains that. Not your till, not your stock file, not last year’s numbers, because last year had a different week in it.
Every tool that answers it anyway is quietly assuming one of two things: that nothing extra sells because of a markdown, or that everything that sold was because of it. Both are assumptions, both are invisible, and the answer is worth exactly as much as the assumption nobody told you about.
This says so on the page and shows only what it can stand behind.
What it can stand behind
What each line makes at the new price. Sale price minus cost. A subtraction on two numbers you have.
What its margin becomes. That subtraction over the sale price. A division on the same two numbers.
Which lines dropped under your floor. A comparison.
Three things, all of them arithmetic on figures already in the building, none of them requiring anything about a week that did not occur.
The floor is yours and it is not a trade number
What margin you can live with comes from your rent, your staffing, your carrying cost and what else is on the rail.
Two shops on the same street will not share one. A shop with cheap space and one employee can go places a shop with a good corner and three cannot. There is no figure from anywhere else that answers this, and a tool that supplied one would be applying somebody else’s rent to your rail.
Why this arithmetic never gets done
It is one subtraction and one division. It is not hard. It still does not happen, and the reason is mundane: the cost and the price are never in the same place.
The price is on the tag and in the till. The cost is on an invoice in a folder, or in a supplier portal, or in a spreadsheet from when the order was placed. Working out what a sale does to margin means going and finding the cost for every line you are marking down, and by then the sale has started.
This holds both. You enter cost alongside price once, and every markdown after that is a number typed and an answer read.
What it replaces
The markdown decided on feel, which is right often enough. Or the one worked out for two lines and assumed for the other forty.
Who it is for
Shops, chandleries, boutiques, hardware, anything on a rail or a shelf where prices get cut and somebody ought to know what that does.
What it will not do
It will not tell you the true cost of a markdown. Said at the top and repeated here, because it is the feature every competitor advertises and the one nobody can honestly deliver.
It suggests no floor. Yours comes from your own costs.
It will not tell you whether to run the sale. Clearing space, moving old stock and getting people through the door are all real reasons a losing line is the right call. A page cannot see any of them.
Nothing you type is sent anywhere. The arithmetic runs in your browser. Your costs are the most commercially sensitive numbers in a retail business, and they stay on the machine you typed them on. Close the tab and it is gone.
Yours would be built the same way.
This one runs on made-up data. The version built for your business runs on yours, and you own it outright. Builds start at $2,500. That is a floor, not a quote. What yours costs is agreed before any work begins. The first conversation is free.