If you saved one penny every day, you’d have $3.65 at year’s end. That might seem insignificant, but if you raised the price by a penny on the hundreds of dancewear items in your store and multiplied that over the course of decades, it would add up to thousands of dollars. So to build a sustainable (and profitable) business, should you be raising your prices—and not just by a penny?
Finding the right balance between pricing something too high (and risking having that item not sell) and pricing it too low (which will eat into your profits) can be tricky, but there are opportunities to raise your prices among specific areas of your inventory. Even with the incoming President’s plan for new tariffs this year that could impact the cost of goods or the efficiency of the supply chain, a strategic price increase may help boost your bottom line.
Identify Your Niche
Your goal as a business owner is to determine what sets you apart. Then you can figure out the best pricing to capture that niche audience. Grand Jeté in Saint Paul, MN, has been known locally for its pointe shoe fitting expertise since 1983. When Solveig Mebust became its new owner in 2022, she built upon that reputation by starting mobile fittings, in addition to individual and group in-store appointments. She also launched a new website with an online store in the fall of 2023, starting first with pointe shoes and then expanding into fashion. “We are looking at how we can provide the best options for customers while still maintaining the bottom line,” Mebust says, adding that she’s finding she has to match the price suggested by her vendors. “We are trying to stay consistent so that the website has the same price as what’s in the retail shop. We are also noticing that customers are checking to see what items we have in stock online before they come to the store to try them on.”
At Brio Bodywear in Ottawa, Canada, owner Gilbert Russell charges a $30 (Canadian) fee for pointe shoe fittings, which last 45 to 60 minutes. “Pointe shoe fittings require so much service, and you shouldn’t discount that,” he says. “When you start charging, more people will see the worth and you’ll actually sell more—and to the right people who see the greater value.”
Be Confident in Your Customer Service
When Brio Bodywear first opened in 1987, Russell’s pricing strategy was to get customers in with low prices and then keep them coming back because of the superior service. “If I were to do it over again, I don’t know if I would use low pricing,” he says. “There is always going to be someone who is cheaper, so then it’s a race to the bottom. While discount pricing strategies are effective for mass merchants, it doesn’t work in dance.”
Russell recommends sticking to keystone pricing—doubling the price of what an item costs wholesale so there is a healthy profit margin—or asking the manufacturer suggested retail price (MSRP) on commodity items. “Don’t run around trying to be cheaper,” he says. “Provide amazing service, be proud of that, and be confident that you can charge more for the special items you bring in.”
For example, if a fancy leotard arrives with a $58 MSRP, but you think you can sell it for $62, then be confident and mark it up. “No one is going to care or notice the difference if you charge $24 instead of $22,” Russell says. “As retailers we’re afraid of pricing higher and we shouldn’t be. People are used to paying money for products they want.”
Offer “Good-Better-Best” Options
Rafi Mohammed, founder of Culture of Profit, a Cambridge, MA-based pricing-strategy consultancy firm, recommends offering good-better-best choices. “You don’t want to put people in a take-it-or-leave-it situation, so give them a few options,” he says. For example, when you go to the car wash, you choose which level of service you want. “You’d think most people would go for the lowest price, but that’s not necessarily the case,” says Mohammed. “You could be leaving money on the table by not offering a premium version.”
Russell says he finds the psychology behind pricing fascinating, especially “anchor pricing.” That’s when a retailer creates a favorable comparison by bringing in higher-priced products to make other products seem less expensive. This is similar to the good-better-best strategy, or listing the original price alongside a discounted price to show the savings gained by making a purchase.
“We might have a $150 dance bag that a dancer shows her mom, and the mom might say, ‘That’s too expensive,’ ” says Russell. “But then we bring out the $80 version and she says, ‘Oh, OK. You can have that one.’ Having the more expensive option on hand changes the perception.”
Consider Your Timing
Monitor sales trends and make adjustments accordingly. It makes the most sense to do any major pricing changes in the new year, after your vendors historically raise their prices. “It truly depends on our vendors,” says Mebust. “They will usually do a larger increase and then hold for two years, or do small increases annually.”
Russell does a large-scale evaluation twice a year to see if anything is underpriced, and he also implements price increases when his costs go up. “However, if we’re seeing something coming in and flying out the door, then we make sure that the next time stock comes in, the new ones are priced higher,” he says.
Think twice, however, about raising prices at a set percentage across the board. “I’m never a fan of a uniform approach of raising prices 3 to 5 percent,” Mohammed says. “Every business needs to be worried about price shock during a time of transitory inflation. A higher-than-expected price sticks in customers’ minds. You don’t want to risk being considered ‘too expensive.’ Once that opinion is set in a consumer’s mind—particularly for products that don’t regularly fluctuate in price—it can be challenging to reverse this psychological impression.”
Hannah Maria Hayes has an MA in dance education from New York University and has been writing for Dance Media publications since 2008.