How do you calculate quote margin?

Subtract loaded cost from quoted price to get the gap, then divide by your reference basis. A quote of 125 against a cost of 100 with a reference of 100 gives a 25-unit gap and a 25% margin.

What is a good margin on nonwoven roll goods?

Commodity spunbond often runs single-digit to low-teens margins, while engineered technical textiles — filtration, geosynthetics, medical — can sustain 25%+ as in this example. Compare against your own floor, not a universal number.

Is this markup or margin?

It depends on your reference. Dividing the gap by cost gives markup; dividing by price gives margin. Here the reference is 100, matching the cost, so the 25% reads as markup-on-cost — choose your basis deliberately.

Why use a separate reference field instead of just price or cost?

The reference lets you express the same dollar gap as a percent of whatever basis your business uses — list price, standard cost, or a target — so the tool fits both margin and markup conventions.

What if the margin comes out negative?

A negative gap means your quoted price is below loaded cost and you'd lose money on every unit. Stop and rework the price or the process before the bid leaves; on thin spunbond margins this happens easily when energy or resin costs drift.

Does loaded cost include conversion and overhead?

It should. Fully loaded cost for technical textiles spans resin, energy, line labor, finishing chemistry, scrap, and allocated overhead — leaving any of these out inflates the margin and burns you at scale.

Nonwoven Materials & Technical Textiles calculator

Quote Margin Calculator

Quote margin is the percentage cushion between what you quote a nonwoven or technical-textile job for and what it actually costs you to produce. Estimators and sales engineers use it to sanity-check a price before it goes out the door, because roll-goods bids are won on cents per square meter and a thin or negative margin hides easily inside resin, energy, and conversion costs. The calculator returns both the dollar gap and the margin percent against a chosen reference, so you can see at a glance whether a bid clears your floor. On commodity spunbond it stops you quoting below cost; on engineered technical textiles it confirms you're capturing the premium your process earns.

What this calculator does

Estimate quote margin for nonwoven materials and technical textiles using production-ready inputs so teams can measure the gap between available and required amounts.
Use it when quote margin in nonwoven materials and technical textiles needs a clean margin number for a nonwoven materials and technical textiles go / no-go review.
It subtracts loaded cost from quoted price to get the margin gap, then divides by a reference basis to express margin as a percent.

Formula used

Quote margin amount gap = available quote margin amount - required quote margin amount
Quote margin = amount gap ÷ reference quote margin amount

Inputs explained

Quoted selling price per unit:
Fully loaded cost per unit:
Reference price or cost basis:

How to use the result

Use it at quoting time to validate a price, or after the fact to audit whether a won job actually delivered the intended margin.
The percent depends entirely on which reference basis you choose — price versus cost — so a 25% figure means different things if the denominator changes; keep your basis consistent across quotes.

Current U.S. benchmarks

Industrial electricity averages 8.66 cents per kWh across the U.S. (EIA, Apr 2026), up 5.5% from a year earlier. Energy-intensive steps carry this directly into unit cost.

Common questions

How do you calculate quote margin? Subtract loaded cost from quoted price to get the gap, then divide by your reference basis. A quote of 125 against a cost of 100 with a reference of 100 gives a 25-unit gap and a 25% margin.
What is a good margin on nonwoven roll goods? Commodity spunbond often runs single-digit to low-teens margins, while engineered technical textiles — filtration, geosynthetics, medical — can sustain 25%+ as in this example. Compare against your own floor, not a universal number.
Is this markup or margin? It depends on your reference. Dividing the gap by cost gives markup; dividing by price gives margin. Here the reference is 100, matching the cost, so the 25% reads as markup-on-cost — choose your basis deliberately.
Why use a separate reference field instead of just price or cost? The reference lets you express the same dollar gap as a percent of whatever basis your business uses — list price, standard cost, or a target — so the tool fits both margin and markup conventions.
What if the margin comes out negative? A negative gap means your quoted price is below loaded cost and you'd lose money on every unit. Stop and rework the price or the process before the bid leaves; on thin spunbond margins this happens easily when energy or resin costs drift.

Last reviewed 2026-05-12.