Working out what to charge
Updated
Do it once, properly, before the range is priced.
Cost per bottle
Components: bottle, trigger or closure, induction liner, label, carton share.
Formula: raw material cost per kilogram times the fill weight.
Labor: your rate divided by finished bottles per hour, filled, capped, sealed, labeled and boxed.
Freight, which for a liquid belongs in the unit cost rather than as an afterthought.
Worked example
A 750 ml trigger spray. Bottle 0.30, trigger 0.55, label 0.08, carton share 0.10: components 1.03.
Formula at, say, 0.40 per kilogram of finished product: 0.30.
Finishing 80 bottles an hour at 25 an hour: 0.31.
Unit cost about 1.64, plus overhead and a scrap allowance, call it 1.85.
Note the shape: the trigger alone is a third of it and the chemistry is a sixth. Sourcing a cheaper surfactant is a rounding error; moving to a concentrate or a simpler closure is not.
From cost to price
Set wholesale first, with a real margin over cost, then double it for retail, then check the retail number against the shelf.
If it is above the band, the components have to change. A small maker cannot win a price fight in this category and should not try.
And if freight is large relative to the unit, the answer is a concentrate rather than a bigger margin.
The sanity check
A real week: hours worked, bottles finished, gross margin per bottle. Multiply.
If the week's margin is not a week's pay, the levers are the components, the freight and the channel, in that order. Working faster is not one of them.