Pricing custom monument orders correctly requires understanding every cost component that goes into each specific order, then applying a consistent margin structure that covers your overhead and generates profit. Dealers who price by intuition or by copying competitors' posted prices without understanding their own costs often discover they are losing money on some orders without knowing why.
Start with your wholesale cost for the stone. Your supplier will quote you a price for the specific granite variety, size, and finish. This is your single largest cost component and the most variable — a standard 24×12×4 single in black India granite costs dramatically less than a 42×16×6 companion in Blue Pearl Norway. Know the wholesale cost for every combination you commonly quote before you are in front of a client.
Add engraving cost. Standard name-and-dates engraving (typically one or two lines of text plus dates) is often included in or bundled with the base monument price by many wholesale suppliers. Beyond that baseline, you are paying for additional text lines, artwork (each additional design element has a unit cost at most suppliers), complex custom artwork billed by the square inch or hour of artwork prep time, and laser portrait engraving billed separately. Get your supplier's engraving price list and use it consistently. Many dealers build simplified engraving cost tables for the engraving combinations they commonly sell, making quoting faster and more accurate.
Freight from your supplier to your location is a real cost that must be recovered. Some dealers absorb freight as overhead; others charge it explicitly. Either approach works as long as your pricing structure accounts for it. For reference, LTL freight costs for a crated single monument from a major Northeastern wholesale distributor typically run $50–$150 depending on distance and carrier rates. For large or heavy monuments, freight can be significantly more.
Setting costs: if you are paying a setting contractor or the cemetery setting crew, those costs must be recovered either by passing them through directly to the client (as a separate line item) or by including them in a turnkey price. Many dealers price monuments and settings separately, which makes it clear to the family what each component costs. Others prefer a single all-inclusive price that includes monument, engraving, delivery, and setting — which simplifies the family's decision but requires accurate cost accounting on your end.
Overhead allocation: your business has fixed costs — vehicle expenses, insurance, display costs, marketing, phone and utilities, and your own time. These overhead costs must be recovered across your monument sales. A simple method is to calculate your total monthly overhead, estimate your average number of monuments sold per month, and add a per-monument overhead allocation to each order's cost before applying your margin. This ensures you are pricing to cover overhead rather than discovering mid-year that sales volume was not sufficient to cover fixed costs.
Apply your margin. Most dealers target a gross margin of 40–55% on monument projects (meaning cost is 45–60% of the selling price). At the lower end of typical wholesale and overhead costs, this produces retail prices competitive with local monument companies. Review your margin quarterly against your actual financial results to confirm you are generating the profitability your business requires.