Note 02
What the unit price is actually made of
Two quotes for the same product can differ by a third and both be honest. They are not pricing the same eight things. This is the list, in the order that changes the total.
The blocks
Eight blocks, and who moves them
| Block | What it covers | What moves it |
|---|---|---|
| Actives | The ingredients that carry the claim | Dose per serving, ingredient grade, and whether the supplier buys certified material |
| Base or carrier | The chew base, the oil, the excipient, the shell | Format. A gelatin softgel shell, a pectin chew and a compressed tablet are three different cost structures |
| Overage | Extra actives added so the batch still passes at expiry | Stability of the active, shelf life claimed, and assay method |
| Container and closure | Jar or bottle, cap, liner, desiccant | Whether the pack is standard or bespoke, and how many you buy at once |
| Label | Print, substrate, finish, plate or digital setup | Print method and run length — setup is a fixed cost spread over your units |
| Line time | Cleaning, setup, run, and the hours the line is yours | Batch size against the line's minimum efficient run |
| Testing | Release panel, and any stability or micro testing | Which tests are run, and whether they are run per batch or per campaign |
| Freight and duty | Getting it from the plant to your door | Incoterm, mode, and volumetric weight — a jar of chews ships worse than a bottle of the same dose |
Small volume
At 300 units, packaging is not the small line
Buyers assume the actives dominate the price. At small volume they usually do not. The jar, the closure, the label print setup and the line's cleaning time are fixed costs, and 300 units is a thin denominator. That is why the first lever on entry price is not a cheaper formula — it is a standard container and a shorter pack count.
The second lever is pack count itself. A 60-count jar holds half the product of a 120-count jar, so the same batch fills twice as many units, and the per-unit fixed cost halves. The trade-off is on the shelf, where a smaller jar has to justify its price per count to the shopper rather than to the buyer.
Where quotes differ
Four places a lower number comes from
- Less overage. The batch passes on the day it is made and fails at month eighteen. You paid for the difference and it left quietly.
- A weaker assay method. Cheaper tests are less specific, and a less specific test is easier to pass.
- A cheaper shell or carrier. Gelatin instead of pectin, a lower-grade oil, a filler that compresses faster. This is the one buyers notice last and taste first.
- Fewer tests. A release panel trimmed to the two tests the label mentions, with no micro and no stability.
A quote that is materially cheaper is not automatically wrong. It is incomplete until those four are named, and a supplier who cannot name them has not priced your product, only a product.
Our position
What our own numbers mean
Indicative pricing on the range page runs $2.80 to $4.40 per unit at a 1,000-unit order, and the ladder on the same page runs from 300 to 20,000 units. Those figures are positions, not quotations: they assume a standard container, the pack counts listed on each line, and the testing panel that line needs in its market.
What is deliberately not in the number: the label design if you want ours, any bespoke tooling, freight beyond the Incoterm quoted, and third-party testing beyond the release panel. Those are quoted separately so that the unit price means one thing.
Questions
Asked about this note
Why is a Chinese quote sometimes cheaper and sometimes not?
What makes the biggest difference to unit cost at small volume?
Do I pay for tooling?
Get the four components separately
Send the line and the pack count, and ask for the price split by actives, pack, testing and freight. A quote that will not split is telling you something.