How to price made-to-measure blinds without losing margin
A practical guide to pricing custom blinds — the hidden costs that erode margin, why per-square-metre pricing misleads, and how to quote consistently across your team.
Made-to-measure blinds look simple to price — width times drop, times a rate — until you look at where the margin actually goes. Two jobs with the same square metreage can land very differently once components, labour and rework are counted. Here’s how to price so the profit you quote is the profit you keep.
Why per-square-metre pricing misleads
A flat rate per square metre assumes every job costs the same to make and install. It doesn’t. A 1.2m × 1.2m roller and a 0.6m × 2.4m roller have the same area, but the tall narrow one uses more tube, a heavier bottom rail relative to width, and is fiddlier to install. Price both off area alone and you’re subsidising one with the other.
The fix isn’t a spreadsheet with more columns — it’s pricing off the actual components and time each configuration consumes.
The costs that quietly erode margin
- Component minimums and offcuts. Fabric and tube are bought in set widths. A job that needs 1.3m of a 2.0m width still consumes the offcut unless you can use it elsewhere. If your pricing ignores waste, your margin absorbs it.
- Options priced as afterthoughts. Motorisation, linked controls, special brackets, non-standard fixings — each adds cost and labour. When these are added “by feel” at quote time, they’re the first thing discounted away.
- Check-measure and install time. A quote that only prices the product treats labour as free. Two-storey access, awkward recesses and difficult fixings all cost time you should be recovering.
- Rework. The most expensive line item never appears on a quote. A mis-measure or a wrong fabric code means remaking at your cost. Consistent, rule-based quoting is the cheapest rework insurance there is.
Quote consistency across your team
The single biggest pricing leak in most window-furnishings businesses isn’t the rate card — it’s that every salesperson prices slightly differently. One rounds up, one forgets the motor, one gives a “mate’s rate” on install. Across a year that variance is real money.
The answer is to take pricing decisions out of individual heads and put them into rules everyone quotes against:
- Build your options and rules once. Fabric ranges, component costs, add-on pricing and labour rates live in one place, not in each rep’s memory.
- Let the system do the maths. Width, drop, fabric and options in — a correct, consistent price out. No mental arithmetic in a customer’s lounge room.
- Control discounting. If discounts need approval past a threshold, enforce it. Margin protected by default beats margin recovered by argument.
Quote in the room, not back at the office
Every day between quote and follow-up is a day the customer keeps shopping. Pricing that’s fast and accurate enough to present and accept on the spot — in the customer’s home, on a tablet — closes more jobs at full margin than a tidy quote emailed three days later.
That’s the real payoff of getting pricing right: not just protecting the margin on each job, but winning more of them.
BUZ is made-to-measure software built for window-furnishings businesses — configure-price-quote on custom blinds, curtains, shutters and awnings, with the job flowing straight to production once it’s accepted. Book a demo to see it priced on your own products.