Setting margins on phone repairs: a practical guide

Pricing is the single highest-leverage decision in your shop. It directly controls margin, indirectly controls volume, and quietly controls which customer segment you attract. Yet most shops set prices once a year and only revisit them when a wholesaler raises a part.

This post is a practical guide to setting margins, written for shops with 50 to 500 active repairs. It covers three rules that, together, handle 95% of the SKUs you carry.

Rule 1: flat margin

Use it for: high-volume parts where the wholesale price is stable and predictable. Most iPhone screens, common batteries, charging ports.

Set the formula as wholesale + €X. The number replaces "X" depends on your local labor cost and overhead, but most shops sit between €80 and €130 for screens, and €40 to €70 for batteries.

Why this works: you protect a known absolute margin per job. When the supplier raises the part price, the customer price moves up automatically and your margin stays the same. When the part price drops, you don't accidentally fly to the bottom.

The risk: if you set X too thin, a single wholesale spike can make a job unprofitable. Watch for parts where wholesale moves more than 15% in a quarter. Those should usually move to Rule 2.

Rule 2: percentage margin

Use it for: premium devices and parts where wholesale moves a lot. Foldable screens, Pro-tier cameras, motherboards, less common Samsung Ultra parts.

Set the formula as wholesale × (1 + X%). Most shops run this at 35-60% on premium parts.

Why this works: when the part is expensive, your absolute margin in euros scales with the cost. A 50% margin on a €280 fold display gives you €140 of margin, not €120. A 50% margin on a €40 battery gives you €20, which is too thin to be worth it on its own. That's why this rule needs Rule 3 alongside it.

Rule 3: floor price

Use it for: every part. Always.

Set a minimum customer price below which the formula cannot go. This is the safety net that catches scenarios neither flat nor percentage rules anticipate.

Common floor prices:

• Screens: €80 minimum, regardless of formula
• Batteries: €45 minimum
• Charging ports: €55 minimum
• Anything labor-intensive: minimum equal to your hourly rate × estimated hours

The floor exists because cheap parts still take real time to install. A €4 wholesale charging port still needs 30 minutes of skilled work. Don't price it like a €4 job.

A worked example, end to end

Take an iPhone 15 screen.

• Wholesale: €74
• Flat margin rule: +€120 = customer price €194
• Floor price: €80
• The flat rule clears the floor, so customer pays €194

Now wholesale spikes to €92 (which happens):

• Flat rule: €92 + €120 = €212
• Floor: €80 (irrelevant here)
• Customer now pays €212. Your margin stayed at €120.

Now imagine the supplier discounts to €38:

• Flat rule: €38 + €120 = €158
• Floor: €80 (irrelevant here)
• Customer pays €158, you keep €120 margin.

Compare that to a fixed price list. Without rules, you'd likely have left the customer price at €194 across all three scenarios. In month one, fine. In month two, you lose money. In month three, you charge more than you need and lose conversions.

Where most shops get this wrong

Three patterns we see often:

• Single rule for everything. Flat margin is great for screens, terrible for foldables. Use both.
• Margin too thin on the most volatile parts. If wholesale moved 30% last year, you need a percentage margin or a wider buffer.
• Forgetting the floor. This is the one that bites. A cheap part still needs labor. Set the floor and forget it.

Operationalizing this

You shouldn't be doing this math manually for every SKU. Tools like RepairPlugin's Dynamic Pricing apply rules across your full catalog and update prices when wholesale changes. Set your three rules, attach them to the right SKU groups, and let the system run.

The goal is to set pricing once, correctly, and only revisit your rules when your business changes, not when your suppliers do.