Why we publish our margins
We are unusual in our category for being explicit about our markup. Here's why.
On our About page we say we mark up between 2.3× and 2.9× of landed cost. That is an unusually specific number for a homeware brand. I would like to explain why we publish it.
The average retail markup in homeware is around 3.5× to 4.5× of landed cost. Some luxury-positioned brands exceed 6×.
We are lower because of three operational choices. First, we own our warehouse. We do not pay a third-party logistics provider a per-unit fee. Second, we do not pay for wholesale accounts to stock us in multi-brand stores. Third, we do not pay for paid advertising at any meaningful scale; our customer acquisition cost is about AED 22, compared with AED 140–180 in our category.
Those choices add up to a margin band we can operate on. A 2.3× markup pays our bills and pays our makers fairly; a 2.9× markup builds the reserve that lets us commission new pieces.
We publish it because our customers ask. When someone is choosing between us and a competitor, knowing that roughly 40–45 dirhams of every hundred goes to the maker and to logistics — and that the rest pays our team, our warehouse, and the next commission — tends to tip the decision our way.
We are not going to make this number lower. Doing so would mean paying our makers less or cutting corners on photography and shipping reliability. Both would make the brand worse. Transparency is not the same as a race to the bottom.