A guide to thinking about pricing strategy across Amazon, DTC websites, and TikTok Shop - the fees that come off the top, the role of brand and audience, and the mistakes to avoid.

Pricing is the single most important commercial decision a private label brand makes, and it is the decision Nutribl is asked about most. The honest answer is that we cannot quote a margin or a retail price for your business - we set our cost, and the rest is yours. But there is a useful way to think about pricing that we do see work, and a small number of mistakes we see catch out clients again and again. This article walks through both.

The core principle: your price has to be relevant to the marketplace you sell on, the brand you have built, and whether you already have an audience. Get those three things in tune and pricing becomes a deliberate decision rather than a guess.

The three inputs that determine your pricing window

Before you pick a price, work through what each of these tells you.

1. Your channel

Each sales channel has different economics. The same supplement can support a £14 retail price on a DTC website where you keep most of the revenue, and need to be £24 on Amazon to deliver the same margin per unit. The maths is set by the channel, not by your preference.

A simplified view of the cost structure on the three main channels:

Amazon UK (FBA)

Amazon takes a referral fee (typically 15% on supplements priced £10 or more and 8% on anything under £10), plus FBA fulfilment fees (varies by size and weight), plus monthly storage, plus returns processing where applicable. On top of that, most listings need Sponsored Ads to gain visibility. Pulled together, all-in costs on Amazon FBA frequently land in the 30-40% of selling price range - and can run higher on competitive categories where ad spend is the biggest single line. Amazon also takes 20% UK VAT off your selling price before paying you. Plan for these costs as fixed and work backwards from your selling price to see what margin remains.

DTC website (Shopify, WooCommerce, etc.)

Direct-to-consumer is the most economically attractive channel per unit, but only if you can drive traffic to it. Direct costs are simpler - payment processing (typically 2–3% via Stripe, GoCardless, or PayPal), shipping (either passed to the customer or absorbed), and any platform subscription. The real cost is customer acquisition: paid social, search ads, influencer partnerships, content production. Many DTC supplement brands spend 20-40% of revenue on marketing in the first 18 months, declining as they build an audience. Without a meaningful marketing budget, DTC is the channel where launches stall most often.

TikTok Shop UK

TikTok Shop has a similar fee structure to Amazon on paper - commission fees plus fulfilment costs - but the marketing model is different. Sales are largely driven by creator content (paid affiliates and organic creators using the affiliate programme), so your effective customer acquisition cost shows up as the affiliate commission rate you set, typically in the 15-25% range. TikTok Shop suits brands with strong visual product appeal and a willingness to manage a creator pipeline; it suits brands with thin margins less well, because the affiliate commission stacks on top of platform fees.

Wholesale and retail

Selling into health stores, gyms, or clinics typically requires a 40-50% margin for the retailer, which means your wholesale price is roughly half the retail price. This works best for brands with established positioning that retailers can sell on the back of, and where unit volumes justify the lower per-unit margin to you.

2. Your brand positioning

Brand positioning sets the ceiling on what you can charge. A clean, well-photographed listing with a clear founder story, defensible ingredient sourcing, and a coherent visual identity can sustain a price 30-50% above a generic-looking competitor on the same product. The same formula in a poorly-presented listing cannot.

This matters because the margin you need to fund marketing and growth comes from the gap between your cost and your retail price. A brand that can sustain a premium price has more headroom for marketing spend, more room to absorb fee increases, and more strategic flexibility. A brand that has positioned itself at the commodity end has the inverse - every fee increase comes straight off the bottom line.

Investing in brand is therefore an investment in pricing power. The Premium label design service, professional product photography, a properly-built website, and a credible founder narrative are not luxuries - they are the assets that let you charge more for the same supplement.

3. Your audience

Whether you already have an audience changes the maths fundamentally.

If you already have an audience - a personal brand, an existing email list, an established YouTube or Instagram following, a clinic or practice - you can launch at a higher price point because your customer acquisition cost is close to zero on the first wave. You can use the launch margin to fund advertising for the second wave.

If you do not have an audience yet, your price has to fund the cost of getting one. That means either pricing high enough to support meaningful marketing spend per unit, or pricing low enough to be discoverable on a marketplace where customers come to you. The middle ground - a mid-range price with no audience and no marketing budget - is the most common reason for stalled launches.

The basic maths

A simplified worked example for an Amazon FBA listing. Use this as a template for your own modelling, not as a target.

Figures above are illustrative for thinking about the structure of unit economics. Actual fees and Nutribl product costs will be different for your specific SKU and channel - model your own figures.

That £3.70 gross margin per unit has to cover: the time you put into the business, returns and refunds, customer service, accounting, any other overheads, and the cash to fund the next stock order. At low volumes, it is easily eaten up. The point of the exercise is to see whether the maths supports your business model before you commit, not afterwards.

Five pricing mistakes we see most often

1. Underestimating Amazon’s all-in fees

The most common mistake. New sellers see the 15% referral fee on the Amazon fee calculator and treat that as the cost of selling on Amazon. The reality once FBA, storage, returns, and Sponsored Ads are in is that all-in costs are usually 30-40% of selling price, and can run higher in competitive categories. Build the realistic figure into your maths from day one, not the headline 15%.

2. Pricing too low

Setting a low retail price to "be competitive" or to win the early sales locks the brand into a commodity position with no margin to fund growth. Once a brand is established at a low price, raising it later is hard - you alienate the customers who bought you on price, and you have nothing left to spend on the marketing that would attract a different kind of customer. Lower prices belong on commodity categories with proven repeat purchase. Premium and aspirational categories rarely succeed at the bottom of the price band.

3. Pricing too high without the brand to justify it

The mirror of the previous mistake. A premium price needs the brand assets to support it - clean photography, considered packaging, a credible founder narrative, ingredient sourcing the customer can verify, content that demonstrates expertise. Without those, a high price reads as overpriced rather than premium, and customers move on. If you cannot justify your premium position visually and verbally in the first thirty seconds of a customer encounter, you are pricing on hope.

4. Not budgeting for customer acquisition

Many launches assume organic reach - friends, social posts, the founder’s personal network - will carry the first wave of sales. Sometimes it does. More often it does not, and the launch stalls in the first three months because there is no plan and no budget for paid acquisition. Customer acquisition cost on supplements typically runs £10-£40 per first-time buyer on paid social, with strong creative and targeting. Decide whether you can fund that out of your unit margin before you launch - not after sales fail to appear.

5. Single-SKU launches with no repeat path

A single product launched on its own has to recover all its acquisition cost from the first sale. A range of products designed to support cross-sell and repeat purchase recovers acquisition cost across multiple sales to the same customer, which transforms the unit economics. If you are launching a single hero SKU, plan the second and third products from the start - even if you launch the hero alone first, customers should know what is coming next.

A note on VAT

Nutribl product prices on the website and in your trade account are shown net of VAT. UK consumer prices on Amazon, Shopify, and TikTok Shop usually include VAT - meaning the price the consumer pays is your price plus 20%. When modelling unit economics, work in the same direction throughout: either gross of VAT consistently or net consistently. Mixing the two is one of the easiest ways to overestimate your margin by a fifth.

Where Nutribl can help, and where we cannot

Nutribl can help you with:

• Selecting products that match your brand positioning
• Tier pricing on stock products to plan your cost-of-goods at different volumes
• Label and brand design that supports a premium position if that is your strategy
• Compliant claims and label content so your listings stand up to scrutiny
• Fulfilment and 3PL support so your operational cost base is predictable

Nutribl cannot give you:

• A target retail price - that is yours to set
• A guaranteed margin - too dependent on your channel, brand, audience, and execution
• Marketing strategy - a different specialism, and the wrong place to take advice from your supplier
• Financial advice - talk to your accountant, not us

To discuss product fit, label design, or commercial structure with us in detail, book a call or email hello@nutribl.com.

Disclaimer

This article is for general information only and does not constitute financial, business, or marketing advice. Figures cited (Amazon fees, processing fees, marketing costs, customer acquisition costs) are indicative industry ranges as a guide for your own modelling - actual figures vary substantially by category, channel, brand, and time period. You should model your own unit economics based on your specific product, channel, and circumstances, and seek professional advice where appropriate.