Pricing · B2B merch · Armenia · AMD ranges · setup fees · decoration · freight

B2B Merch Pricing Explained for Armenia

Two offers for the same spec can land a country apart, and the difference is almost never the per-unit line. This page walks through the four cost layers that make a real B2B merchandise offer — setup, per-unit, decoration, freight — and through the line items that live underneath those layers and still move the total. It is written for procurement and marketing teams in Armenia who are pricing a Yerevan conference run, a 1 000-unit employee kit, a 5 000-unit dealer rollout, or a 100-unit board gift set, and who want to compare offers line by line.

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What a B2B merchandise price is actually made of

A merchandise order billed in Armenian dram is a layered number, not a single number, and procurement teams that compare offers on the headline figure are comparing the layer the supplier chose to lead with. The four primary layers are setup, per-unit, decoration, and freight, plus a fifth category — hidden line items — that has its own logic and its own size on the invoice. Each layer is decided in a different document and is independent of the others in the sense that a change in one moves the line that sits on top of it and nothing else. A request for a cheaper offer that leaves the specification untouched usually produces a number with the same AMD total and a thinner margin distributed elsewhere across the line set.

The headline AMD figure is therefore a function of five parameters the buyer controls and several the buyer does not. Material grade, decoration method, volume tier, decoration-area coverage, and Incoterm sit on the buyer side and are negotiable through specification. Freight rate, customs treatment, screen-burning setup, per-SKU tooling, the artwork-hour charge, and the sample-prototype cost sit on the supplier side and run as separate invoiced lines. The mistake most first-time buyers make is to read a quote as if it were one line — 1 000 units at AMD X per unit, total AMD Y — when in practice a serious offer arrives as twelve to twenty lines and the total is the sum of all of them, less any volume discount negotiated line by line against the same spec.

A useful mental model is the sandwich: bread is setup and freight, both fixed-cost and independent of volume; filling is per-unit, which scales linearly with quantity; sauce is decoration, which scales with area, colour count, and the number of decoration steps. Hidden line items are what fall outside — the artwork prep that was not quoted, the sample absorbed into setup, the screen that was burned twice because the Pantone reference changed. None is fictitious; all exist in real orders and show up on the final invoice under a name the buyer did not see in the original offer.

Four primary cost layers: Setup, per-unit, decoration, freight — each decided in a different document
Hidden line items: Artwork prep, samples, screens re-burned, packaging upgrades, sample shipping
Price-comparison units: Line-by-line totals, not headline per-unit prices
Currency convention: AMD invoicing; foreign-currency offers converted at contract date
Volume tiers typical in Armenia: 100, 250, 500, 1 000, 2 500, 5 000, 10 000 units

Four blocks that drive every merchandise offer

The line items that show up on a merchandise invoice vary with the project, but the four blocks that drive the AMD figure on every offer are constant and worth setting out. Each block answers a question that will otherwise be asked late and answered at the buyer's expense.

Setup and tooling fees

Setup is the fixed-cost layer that runs once per SKU and once per decoration, regardless of how many units are produced. On a screen-printed cotton t-shirt, setup covers the screen burn per colour, the artwork preparation against the supplied vector file, and the registration set-up on the press. A four-colour print on one garment therefore carries four screens and four burns, each one a line item, and that line is amortised across the run — meaning the per-unit share of setup falls as volume rises and rises sharply when the volume falls. On an embroidered cap, setup covers the digitising of the design into stitch file, the fabric-hooping set-up on the multi-head machine, and the thread colour changes that are not covered by the run-time assumption. On a digitally printed mug, setup is largely absent on the printing side because there is no screen, but artwork preparation, colour-matching against the supplied Pantone, and the production of a pre-production proof still produce a fee, shown as a separate line so the buyer can see it and decline it.

Per-unit production cost

The per-unit layer is the one that gets quoted as if it were the whole offer, which it never is. For an apparel item, per-unit is the cut-and-sew blank at the chosen grade plus trim — woven label, printed neck label, care label, hangtag — plus a margin for waste. For a hard-goods item such as a ceramic mug or a stainless-steel bottle, per-unit is the blank at the chosen grade, the inner coating, the lid or cap assembly, the gift box if specified, and the packaging required to ship without breakage. For a paper or stationery item, per-unit is the substrate at the chosen grammage, the print method, the binding, and the protective sleeve. The grade the buyer chooses is the single largest per-unit driver: a 180-gram cotton tee at the same print setup can be twice the per-unit of a 150-gram cotton tee, and a 304-grade stainless bottle is roughly thirty per cent more expensive than a 201-grade stainless bottle with the same capacity. Volumes at which the per-unit price moves materially are 250, 500, 1 000, 2 500 and 5 000 for apparel, and 100, 250, 500, 1 000 and 2 500 for hard goods.

Decoration method and its price breaks

Decoration is the layer where the per-unit figure gets multiplied by the decoration-method cost rather than added to it, which is why the buyer's choice of decoration method can move the AMD total by more than the choice of blank. Screen printing prices fall on a colour-count curve: a one-colour print at one location is the cheapest option and the price breaks are visible, but a four-colour print at three locations is twelve print passes, twelve screens, twelve setups, and the price per unit does not fall as the volume rises because the bottleneck is press time, not material. Embroidery prices are governed by stitch count rather than by colour count; the cost driver is digitising once plus a per-thousand-stitch charge on each garment. Digital printing — DTG, UV flatbed, dye-sublimation — has almost no setup per unit once the file is loaded, but the per-unit ink-and-time cost is higher than screen at low volumes and lower at high volumes. Pad printing, laser engraving, debossing, and heat-transfer each have their own cost curve.

Freight, customs and the landed-cost share

Freight is the layer that a domestic supplier price and an international supplier price move furthest apart on, and it is the layer most often mis-described in the original offer. A domestic Armenia producer running FCA Yerevan or DAP Yerevan carries freight on a route the buyer can name — a courier, a trucking line, a local last-mile — and the freight share of the landed AMD is typically two to eight per cent of the order value. A producer in a non-EAEU origin running CIP Yerevan carries an international freight line, an insurance line, a customs clearance line, and a last-mile line, and the freight share tends to be twelve to thirty per cent depending on volume, value per unit, and route. Within the EAEU customs union — Armenia, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan — internal movements do not incur customs duties but still incur freight. Two offers at the same per-unit figure can sit at AMD 1.8 million or at AMD 2.3 million for the same 1 000-unit order depending on which supplier priced the freight line honestly.

How the per-unit figure actually moves with volume

Volume matters in this category in a way it does not in most other B2B purchases, because the volume mix on a merchandise order determines whether the setup is amortised over fifty units or five hundred. The table below sets out indicative AMD ranges for representative items at typical Armenia procurement volumes, all-in per-unit before VAT, with decoration method called out separately because it scales least gracefully with volume.

For an unbranded 180-gram cotton t-shirt with a one-colour one-location print, the indicative AMD per-unit band runs from roughly AMD 3 800 at 100 units to AMD 1 950 at 1 000 units to AMD 1 550 at 5 000 units, with setup amortised into the per-unit figure at the lower volumes and shown as a separate line at the higher volumes. For a four-colour three-location print on the same blank, the band runs from AMD 5 400 at 100 units to AMD 3 200 at 1 000 units, with the four-by-three print pattern producing a smaller saving on volume because press time is the constraint. For a 350-millilitre ceramic mug with a one-colour one-location print, the band runs from AMD 2 400 at 100 units to AMD 1 300 at 1 000 units. For a 500-millilitre 304-grade stainless bottle with laser engraving, the band runs from AMD 6 800 at 100 units to AMD 4 200 at 1 000 units to AMD 3 700 at 5 000 units.

The way to read a range like this is not as a quotation — every order is priced individually against a written specification — but as the comparison a procurement team can build into a budget sheet before requesting formal offers. The numbers carry the actual shape of the volume curve, including where it flattens: 1 000 units is the breakpoint for most apparel categories; 500 units is the breakpoint for most hard-goods categories, beyond which freight and packaging optimisation drive the saving rather than print setup. Below those breakpoints, the per-unit share of setup is the largest non-material cost line on the invoice, which is why very small orders are priced disproportionately higher.

Cotton tee, 1c/1loc print: AMD 3 800 at 100 · AMD 1 950 at 1 000 · AMD 1 550 at 5 000
Cotton tee, 4c/3loc print: AMD 5 400 at 100 · AMD 3 200 at 1 000 · AMD 2 400 at 5 000
Ceramic mug 350 ml, 1c print: AMD 2 400 at 100 · AMD 1 300 at 1 000 · AMD 1 100 at 2 500
Stainless bottle 500 ml, laser: AMD 6 800 at 100 · AMD 4 200 at 1 000 · AMD 3 700 at 5 000
A5 notebook, PU cover, deboss: AMD 3 200 at 100 · AMD 1 700 at 1 000 · AMD 1 450 at 5 000
Pen, full-colour wrap print: AMD 950 at 250 · AMD 520 at 1 000 · AMD 410 at 5 000
Tote, cotton canvas, screen 2c: AMD 2 800 at 100 · AMD 1 450 at 1 000 · AMD 1 150 at 5 000
Lanyard, polyester, dye-sub: AMD 1 100 at 250 · AMD 540 at 1 000 · AMD 380 at 5 000

Ranges are indicative for budget planning and exclude VAT and freight. Each order is priced individually against a written specification.

Decoration methods and where each one crosses the others

Decoration cost is not a flat add-on. It is the layer where a less expensive decoration method on a more expensive blank can land at the same AMD per unit as a more expensive decoration method on a less expensive blank, and where the volume mix decides which is cheaper. A few crossover points are worth knowing because they explain why two offers for the same brief produce different decoration choices.

Screen printing crosses over to digital printing — DTG on apparel, UV flatbed on hard goods — somewhere in the 250 to 500-unit range. Below that crossover, screen printing with a one-colour print and low setup is cheaper; above it, the absence of per-unit screen amortisation makes digital cheaper even at the higher per-unit print cost, and the print quality on photographic content is materially better. Embroidery crosses over to screen printing on apparel at a higher volume — roughly 1 000 to 2 000 units — because embroidery has a higher per-unit cost but no volume threshold at which it starts to look expensive relative to screen. Pad printing on small hard goods — pens, USB drives, keychains — is the lowest-cost decoration method on items under AMD 1 500 per unit at any volume. Laser engraving on metal and wood items loses to screen printing on plastic below AMD 4 500 per unit because the laser time is the constraint; above that figure, engraving wins because there is no ink cost and the per-unit saving on volume is meaningful.

Two decisions flow from this. The decoration method on an offer is not an automatic choice from a list — it is a function of volume, blank, and artwork, and a supplier that proposes embroidery on a 100-unit run without explaining the digitising charge is not quoting a comparable offer. The crossover is where the offer comparison gets interesting, because a supplier pricing at the crossover will produce a different decoration proposal than a supplier pricing above or below it. Asking both suppliers to quote the same brief at the same volume and the same decoration-method count is the only way to make the AMD figures comparable.

Material grades and the quiet way they reset the unit cost

Material grade is the cheapest line on the offer to change and the most expensive line on the invoice to absorb. A 180-gram cotton tee is roughly twenty-five per cent more expensive per blank than a 150-gram cotton tee, and the difference shows up as a per-unit line of AMD 200 to AMD 350 on a 1 000-unit order. A 304-grade stainless steel bottle is roughly thirty per cent more expensive than a 201-grade stainless bottle with the same capacity, with a per-unit line of AMD 300 to AMD 500 at the same volume. A ring-bound notebook with a 70 gsm inner paper at 80 sheets is roughly twenty per cent cheaper than the same notebook at 90 gsm. Paper for printed materials — flyers, leaflets, certificates, menus — at 150 gsm versus 200 gsm versus 250 gsm moves the per-unit line by AMD 30 to AMD 80 on a 1 000-unit print run.

The point of these examples is not to recommend a particular grade — every project calls for its own grade — but to demonstrate that any line on an offer that names a material without naming a grade is a line that can be substituted by a supplier when margin is tight, and the buyer will not necessarily see the change because the SKU looks the same. A practical rule is to name the grade in the specification, not in the offer: 180-gram cotton tee rather than mid-weight cotton tee, 304 stainless rather than stainless, 90 gsm inner rather than standard inner. That single habit converts a fuzzy comparison into a like-for-like one and converts the procurement audit trail from approve the quote into approve the spec, then the quote.

Freight, customs, and how big a share freight actually is

The freight line on an offer can be the second-largest line after the blank, and it is the one most often underestimated because freight gets discussed as a single concept rather than as four components: origin handling, line haul, customs clearance, and last-mile delivery. For Armenia procurement, the routes that matter are domestic movement by truck or courier within the country, regional movement from EAEU partners by road or rail, and intercontinental movement from non-EAEU origins by air or sea. Each produces a different AMD share at the same order value.

A domestic Armenia order running FCA Yerevan carries a freight share of two to four per cent of the order value at 1 000 units, and one to two per cent at 5 000 units. A regional EAEU order running DAP Yerevan carries a freight share of four to eight per cent at 1 000 units and three to five per cent at 5 000 units; the saving versus a non-EAEU origin is purely on customs duty, since freight costs for a road move from Moscow or a rail move from Almaty are not dramatically lower than for a sea-air move from Shenzhen. A non-EAEU order running DDP Yerevan carries a freight share of twelve to twenty-five per cent at 1 000 units and ten to eighteen per cent at 5 000 units, with the lower end reserved for sea-air consolidations on long lead-time orders and the higher end for air-freight on tight lead-time orders.

The customs treatment on a non-EAEU import follows the HS classification of the goods, and classification follows the physical item rather than the description used by the buyer. A printed cotton tee crosses at HS 6109.10, a notebook at HS 4820.10, a ceramic mug at HS 6912.00, a stainless bottle at HS 7323.93, a pen at HS 9608.99, and a lithium power bank at HS 8507.60 with the UN Manual of Tests and Criteria Tests 38.3 documentation. The applicable customs duty on a non-EAEU import is the duty rate applied to the customs value plus VAT at twenty per cent on the duty-inclusive base. EAEU-origin imports do not incur customs duty but do incur the same twenty per cent VAT assessment. Two offers with the same per-unit figure but different origins can land at AMD figures that differ by ten to fifteen per cent purely on freight and customs.

Hidden line items that change a quote after it has been accepted

Most offers arrive at the buyer with the headline four layers clearly stated and a set of smaller lines that are easy to miss until the invoice arrives. The categories worth checking for during a quote review are artwork preparation, sample charges, additional screens, packaging upgrades, and what the supplier's house terms call project handling or account management.

Artwork preparation is the single most common hidden cost. The typical assumption is that a buyer who supplies a print-ready vector file pays no artwork fee; the typical reality is that the supplier charges for artwork preparation regardless, because the supplier is going to retype the artwork for production, run it through colour-separation, and check it for trademark issues. A fair offer states the artwork fee once and waives it where the supplied file passes a defined acceptance test; an offer that always charges for artwork without a waiver is one the buyer is paying for work that may not happen.

Sample charges are the second category. A pre-production sample — the unit the buyer approves before the production run starts — is normally priced at the per-unit figure plus a setup figure and is credited against the production order if the run confirms. A second sample, requested because the buyer wants to test a different Pantone or a different decoration area, is normally priced the same way and is not credited. A third sample, requested because a problem surfaced that the buyer wants to resolve before going into production, is typically charged at cost and sometimes credited depending on house terms.

Packaging upgrades are the third category. The standard packaging on a merchandise order is a poly-bag and a master carton at the supplier's chosen size. The packaging that a Yerevan conference usually needs is something different — individual boxes for VIP kits, poly-bags bundled in tens, sleeve-wrapped sets — and the upgrade from the supplier's house packaging is a line on the offer, normally priced at AMD 80 to AMD 250 per unit. The negotiation is on whether the supplier's house packaging is acceptable in the first place, which is a question to resolve before the offer is requested.

The fourth category is account management and is the one most likely to fall outside the four primary layers. Project handling covers the supplier's coordination work — sourcing the blank, ordering the Pantone, calling the freight forwarder, producing the certificate pack — that happens on every order. On a multi-SKU order from a regional or intercontinental supplier, project handling is sometimes priced as a percentage of order value, typically three to six per cent, and shows up as a line called project fee, account management, or sourcing and logistics. It is not fictitious; the work is real. It is worth knowing about before the offer arrives.

Why two quotes for the same spec can differ by thirty per cent

A buyer who requests three offers for an identical spec and receives AMD figures that span thirty per cent is not looking at three attempts to price the same product; the buyer is looking at three different products that have been priced in three different ways and presented under the same SKU. The differences are real and are discoverable by reading the offers carefully. Five causes account for most of the spread.

The first is decoration method. One supplier priced the print on the cotton tee as a one-colour one-location screen print; another priced it as a four-colour one-location screen print; a third priced it as a digital print with a photographic background. All three are valid decoration methods, and the SKU on the buyer's specification was ambiguous about which to use. The first offer is cheapest on decoration but does not match the visual the buyer approved; the second is the middle figure and matches the visual; the third is the most expensive per unit but matches the visual without the screen-amortisation overhead.

The second is material grade. One supplier priced the blank at the grade the buyer's specification named; another priced it at a grade the supplier chooses on grounds of equivalent quality; the third priced it at the buyer's named grade in one blank and a substitute blank in another. The AMD figures differ because the substitutions are real, and a buyer who does not catch the substitution at quote stage catches it at delivery stage, which is the wrong stage to catch it.

The third is freight treatment. One supplier priced FCA Yerevan, another priced DAP Yerevan, and a third priced DDP Yerevan; the differences in the freight line are exactly the freight share plus customs share plus last-mile share, and they explain five to fifteen per cent of the AMD total without any change in the underlying product. The fourth is a hidden line that one supplier absorbed and another itemised. The fifth is margin, which no supplier will explain and no buyer should expect them to, because margin is the supplier's commercial judgement about the deal.

The take-away is that the buyer who wants a like-for-like comparison has to do three things: write a specification that resolves every ambiguity in material and decoration, request offers against the same Incoterm, and request that every offer be returned in the same line structure. Where a supplier refuses one of the three, the AMD figure is not directly comparable, and the right move is to ask the supplier to re-quote against the buyer's structure rather than average their figure into the comparison.

Comparing offers line by line

The discipline of comparing merchandise offers against the same line structure is the single most useful procurement habit in this category. A typical offer that a buyer can build a comparison template from contains fourteen lines, and every line should be present on every offer a buyer wants to compare. Where a line is missing — typically because the supplier absorbed it into another line — the right move is to ask the supplier to break it out rather than absorb the absence into the comparison.

The first four lines are the blank at the named grade, the trim and accessories, the artwork preparation, and the setup per SKU per decoration. The next four lines are the decoration cost per unit per colour per location, the sample cost, the production run cost, and the inline inspection cost. The next three lines are the packaging at the buyer's specification, the freight from origin to named Incoterm point, and the customs clearance and last-mile delivery where applicable. The final three lines are the account management fee, the project documentation pack, and the defect-replacement allowance. The AMD figure on the bottom of the offer is correct only when all fourteen are itemised.

A practical tip is to build a comparison sheet that the buyer shares with every supplier on the longlist, in the buyer's chosen format, so that the offers come back in identical structure. Suppliers who refuse a buyer-supplied format are usually running on a quote-fast rhythm rather than a buy-with-the-buyer rhythm. The latter is the supplier to build a long-term relationship with.

Questions procurement teams ask about merch pricing

What is the typical volume tier at which the per-unit price stops falling steeply?

For apparel categories, 1 000 units is the breakpoint beyond which additional volume produces a smaller saving on the per-unit figure, because press time and trim cost are the constraints rather than the blank. For hard goods, 500 units is the breakpoint, because the decoration setup is a smaller share of the blank-led cost. Beyond those breakpoints, additional volume still saves on freight and packaging optimisation but the per-unit saving is smaller than what is seen below the breakpoint. Suppliers should be asked to quote the per-unit figure at one tier above and one tier below the actual volume.

Why do two offers for an identical specification differ by tens of per cent?

The five causes are decoration method, material grade, freight treatment, hidden line items and margin. Decoration method differences arise when the buyer's specification is ambiguous about whether the print is one-colour or four-colour, screen or digital. Material grade differences arise when the buyer's specification does not name the grade and the supplier substitutes. Freight treatment differences arise when the offers are priced against different Incoterms. Hidden line items arise when one supplier absorbs a cost and another itemises it. Margin is the one no supplier will explain and no buyer should expect them to, because it reflects the supplier's commercial judgement about the deal. The fix is to write a specification that resolves every ambiguity in material and decoration, request offers against the same Incoterm, and ask every offer to be returned in the same line structure.

Are artwork preparation, samples, packaging, account management and certificates always priced separately?

Not always. Some suppliers absorb these costs into the per-unit figure or a single project-fee line; others itemise each one explicitly. Itemisation is the more transparent approach because it lets the buyer see what they are paying for and decline or adjust individual lines. Absorption is the lower-headline approach and is common on smaller offers. A buyer who wants a defensible comparison should ask for itemisation in writing before the offer is returned.

Is Corp-Merch affiliated with, endorsed by, or an official supplier of the brands, customs regimes, or industry references on this page?

No. Corp-Merch is an independent B2B merchandise supplier operating in Armenia and the wider EAEU. References to cotton grades, stainless grades, custom HS classifications, Incoterms 2020, EAEU customs treatment, the UN Manual of Tests and Criteria, and any producer, decoration method or trade term are informational only and imply no partnership, sponsorship, endorsement or official-supplier relationship with any of them. Nothing on this page constitutes a binding quotation; every order is priced individually against a written specification and a signed contract.

This page is written for procurement, marketing and sourcing teams pricing a custom merchandise order in Armenia and the wider EAEU. Corp-Merch is an independent B2B merchandise supplier. Descriptions of pricing practice, decoration methods, freight treatment and customs classification describe general commercial practice for this category as we understand it, are not legal, tax or customs advice, and current treatment must be confirmed with qualified counsel or a customs specialist for your own facts. AMD ranges, volume tiers and cost shares shown here are typical of the category and are not a fixed quotation; each order is priced individually against a written specification and a signed contract.