Gross Margin Calculator: Find What Your Blended Number Is Hiding
Your blended margin hides the product that’s dragging it down. One line at 14% in a 38% portfolio erases EUR 840K per year for a EUR 40M manufacturer. Add up to 5 product lines below to find it.
Gross Margin Calculator
Compare margins across products and see where you stand against your industry.
How to Read Your Results
The comparison table ranks every product line from worst to best margin. Check the worst-performing row first: it shows how many percentage points that line pulls the blended number down, and what portfolio margin would look like without it.
A low margin isn’t always a problem. A line at 18% on EUR 8M revenue may be a deliberate volume play to anchor a customer or fill factory capacity. The question isn’t whether the margin is low. It’s whether you made an active decision to accept it, or whether it drifted there while the blended number looked fine.
What to Do With These Numbers
If one line is dragging significantly
Model a 5% price increase on that line only. At 18% margin, a 5% price increase adds roughly 4 points to that line’s margin assuming volume holds at 85%. Run the calculator again with adjusted figures before taking the number to a pricing meeting.
If all lines are within benchmark but blended margin is declining
The problem is mix shift, not a single bad product. Compare the revenue share of your lowest-margin lines this year versus two years ago. If they’ve grown as a share of total, that explains the drift. The fix is growth strategy, not cost cutting.
If COGS looks right but margin is still below benchmark
Check your COGS boundary. Sales commissions classified above the gross line, or freight costs absorbed into product cost, can shift the margin figure by 3-5 points without reflecting any real change in unit economics.
Related Tools
See which product line your business is actually subsidizing and by how much.
Connect margin to cash cycle and see the full picture in one number.
Go Deeper
- Profitability Analysis — how to move from gross margin to operational decisions
- ABC Analysis — the same product segmentation logic applied to inventory prioritization
- Revenue Leakage — what happens above the gross margin line before it even reaches your calculation