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Calculate Per-Variant Profit
Common Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does product-level profit hide variant problems?
A t-shirt that "averages" 35% margin can have a Black/M variant at 45% and a Cream/L variant at 12% - because the cream fabric costs more, the L size has worse sell-through, and Cream/L gets the same ad share despite being a slower mover. Product-level reporting smooths over these gaps; variant-level reporting exposes them.
How should I allocate ad spend across variants?
Revenue-proportional allocation is the simplest model: a variant that drives 30% of product revenue gets 30% of the ad spend. This is what the calculator uses and what most ad platforms approximate via auto-bidding. The alternative is unit-proportional, which over-allocates to high-volume cheap variants and under-allocates to premium ones.
What does cannibalization mean at the variant level?
When a low-margin variant absorbs a disproportionate share of the ad budget compared to the profit it generates, it cannibalizes higher-margin siblings. If your Cream/L variant gets 25% of ad share but only delivers 12% margin while Black/M is at 45% margin, every ad dollar going to Cream/L would generate more profit pushed to Black/M instead.
Should I discontinue low-margin variants?
Not always. Some low-margin variants are strategic: an entry-size or anchor color that triggers upsells to higher-margin variants. The test is whether the low-margin variant's buyers eventually purchase a higher-margin variant in a subsequent order. If not, and the variant just loses money on its own, discontinue it.
Why is variant-level data hard to track?
Most analytics tools (GA4, Meta Ads, Google Ads) attribute conversions to a product, not a specific SKU variant. Even Shopify's own reporting groups variants under the parent product for ad-spend attribution. Getting variant-level profit requires joining order line items (which have SKU) with ad spend (which has product or campaign) - a data pipeline most stores don't have.
How does this calculator handle shared inventory across variants?
For COGS, the calculator uses your per-unit COGS for each variant - so a cream-fabric variant correctly costs more than the same item in a stock color. Where variants share fulfillment, packaging, or processing, those costs should be loaded into per-variant COGS rather than treated as fixed - otherwise low-volume variants will look more profitable than they really are.