Landed cost is the total cost of getting goods to their destination, including the unit price plus freight, duties, insurance, and handling.
Sep 24, 2026
Landed cost starts with the price paid to the manufacturer and adds everything spent before the goods are ready to sell: international and domestic freight, customs duty, import taxes that cannot be reclaimed, insurance, brokerage, and warehouse handling.
Costs that arrive as a single invoice for a whole shipment have to be allocated down to the unit, usually by value or by volume. Which allocation method is used changes the apparent margin of individual styles, sometimes substantially.
Two styles with identical factory prices can have very different landed costs if one is bulky, ships from further away, or falls into a higher duty category. Margin calculated on unit price alone will overstate the profitability of the heavier product.
For a buyer, landed cost is the real basis for the multiplier and the retail price. For a brand, it is the floor beneath the wholesale price, and it moves with freight rates and tariffs long after the price list has been printed.
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