Doubling your cost is retail's oldest pricing rule; see the exact profit and margin it leaves you.
Keystone price = unit cost × 2. Keystone pricing is the traditional retail shortcut: double what the product costs you and that is the shelf price. A product with a $22 landed cost keystones to a $44 retail price, earning $22 profit per unit, always exactly a 50% margin, because doubling cost means half of every sale is profit. It is a starting point, not a law: strong brands price above keystone, and commodity categories often cannot sustain it. Enter your cost to get the keystone price instantly.
Keystone price
$44.00
Margin
50.0%
Profit per unit
$22.00
Estimate only. Results reflect exactly the numbers you enter — verify
against your own accounting before making pricing decisions.
A $22 landed cost keystones to $44: half of every sale is profit.
Low-cost accessory
Unit cost
$8.50
Keystone price
$17.00
Margin
50.0%
Profit per unit
$8.50
Small items keystone too: $8.50 doubles to $17 with $8.50 profit each.
Keystone markup vs keystone margin. Keystoning a product is a 100% markup on cost, which is the same thing as a 50% margin on price — the two vocabularies describe one doubling. Retail buyers tend to talk keystone markup ("we keystone everything in that line"); finance talks margin. If a vendor quotes you "2.2× keystone-plus", that is a 120% markup, or a 54.5% margin. Keeping the two straight matters most in wholesale negotiations, where a point of markup and a point of margin are different amounts of money.
Worked examples: keystone and the multiples around it. Keystone is the 2.0× row; retail rarely stops there, so these are the multiples buyers actually quote, all on a $22 landed cost.
Multiple
Retail price
Markup
Margin
1.5×
$33.00
50%
33.3%
1.8×
$39.60
80%
44.4%
2.0× (keystone)
$44.00
100%
50.0%
2.2× (keystone-plus)
$48.40
120%
54.5%
2.5×
$55.00
150%
60.0%
3.0× (triple keystone)
$66.00
200%
66.7%
What keystone pricing means, precisely. Its meaning in retail is a multiple rather than a margin target: keystone means setting retail at exactly twice your landed cost. The 50% margin is a consequence of that doubling rather than the rule itself, which is why the two get confused. The rule survives because it is fast and it self-corrects — when cost rises, price rises with it automatically. Its weakness is that it ignores what the market will bear, so a keystoned commodity is often priced above the competition while a keystoned premium product leaves money uncollected. Compare against a margin vs markup view before committing a whole line to one multiple.
Frequently asked questions
What is keystone pricing and where does it come from?
Keystone pricing means setting the retail price at exactly double the unit cost, a 100% markup, which is always a 50% margin. It comes from pre-computer brick-and-mortar retail, where a simple universal rule beat per-item math. It survives because a 50% gross margin genuinely covers typical retail overhead in many categories.
Is a 50% margin enough for an online store?
Often, but not always. Keystone was calibrated for physical retail; online stores add paid acquisition, shipping subsidies, and marketplace fees that physical stores did not carry. If ads cost you 20% of revenue and shipping another 8%, keystone leaves roughly 22% before overhead. Many DTC brands price at 2.5–4× cost instead.
When should I price above or below keystone?
Price above keystone when you have brand strength, exclusivity, or high service costs. Apparel and jewelry often run 2.5–3× cost. Price below it when the product is easily comparison-shopped: electronics and commodity goods rarely sustain 2×. Use keystone as the anchor, then adjust for how replaceable your product is in the buyer’s eyes.
What should be included in the cost before doubling?
Use the landed unit cost: factory or wholesale price plus inbound freight, duty, and packaging. Doubling only the bare product cost quietly gives away the freight and duty out of your profit. If marketplace or payment fees are predictable per unit, folding them in before doubling gives a more honest keystone price.
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