Sales and discounts are great tools to clear slow stock, reward loyal customers, or spark a quiet month. But a discount comes straight out of your margin, and because makers often run thin margins to begin with, a "20% off" can wipe out most of your profit on each sale. Run a sale on purpose, with the math first, and it works. Run one on a whim and it can cost you money to make sales.
A discount is a direct hit to profit
When you knock 20% off the price, you don't lose 20% of your profit. You lose 20% of the whole price, and that comes entirely out of your margin. If your margin was 30%, a 20% discount leaves you with a third of what you made before. Know your true cost first, so you can see what a discount actually leaves you.
Discount with a reason
- Clear slow stock: a discount on a slow mover frees cash and space; better than holding it forever.
- Reward loyalty or volume: a small discount that builds repeat customers can pay for itself.
- Create urgency: a time-boxed sale drives action you can plan around.
What you want to avoid is the habitual, across-the-board discount that just trains customers to never pay full price.
A discount isn't free marketing. It's marketing you pay for out of your margin, so spend it on purpose.
Protect the floor
- Start from your true cost, and never discount below it.
- Decide the goal: clear stock, reward loyalty, or drive urgency.
- Pick a discount that still leaves a profit, and time-box it.
- Measure whether it actually moved product, or just gave away margin on sales you'd have made anyway.
Know your floor before you discount
The danger of a sale is discounting into a loss without realizing it. Keepsel keeps a true cost for every product, and from the Maker plan you can ask Suli whether a sale price still pays, with the math shown, so you run the sale on purpose instead of hoping it worked out.