Pricing a block honestly

The most dangerous number in a stone yard is a margin that looks healthy and isn't. It doesn't feel like a loss — the invoice is fine, the customer is happy — but the profit you thought you made was never really there. Honest pricing is mostly about refusing to let that happen.

Start with a true cost basis

You can't price honestly if you don't know what a block actually cost you. That number should attach to the block the moment it enters the yard — from the purchase order it came in on — and travel with it for its whole life. A block whose cost is a guess is a block you can only price by guess.

This is why capturing cost at intake matters so much. If the cost basis is set when goods are received, every downstream number — margin, per-block profit, the true cost of a slab — has something real to stand on.

Cutting changes the cost

If a block is sold whole, its cost is straightforward. If it's cut, everything shifts — because cutting has wastage, and wastage isn't free (see the gangsaw recovery guide for the full maths). The short version: the block's whole cost has to be spread over the slabs that actually survived the cut, not over the theoretical output. A low-recovery cut makes each surviving slab genuinely more expensive, and pricing has to reflect that or you'll quote below cost without knowing.

Add the processing, honestly

Cutting and finishing have their own costs — the saw, the labour, the consumables. Whatever your processing cost per square foot, it belongs in the slab's cost before you decide a selling price. Leaving it out is the same mistake as ignoring wastage: a margin that looks fine and isn't.

The most important rule: unknown means unknown

Here is the discipline that separates honest books from flattering ones. When a cost is genuinely not known, it should show as not known — never quietly treated as zero.

Why does this matter? Because a cost of zero produces a margin of 100%. A block with an unknown cost, if you let the unknown become a zero, looks like pure profit. It's the most seductive lie in the trade — and a yard that believes its own fake margins prices too low, buys the wrong stone, and wonders at year-end where the money went.

So: if you don't know what something cost, say so. An "N/A" on a margin is honest and useful. A fabricated 100% is neither.

Price from truth, then negotiate

Once a block or slab carries its true, wastage-adjusted, processing-included cost, you finally have solid ground. You know the floor you must not cross. You can discount an aging block deliberately, knowing exactly what you're giving up. You can negotiate hard on a fresh, high-recovery slab, knowing your room.

Honest pricing doesn't mean pricing high. It means pricing knowingly — so that every rupee you give away in a negotiation is a rupee you chose to give, not one that leaked out while you weren't looking.