Suggested retail price is the shelf price you recommend to every shop that stocks you, published on your line sheet and printed wherever the product can carry it. It is a recommendation, not a rule, and in most places you cannot legally force a shop to follow it.
Publishing one anyway is not optional. Without a stated number, twelve stockists set twelve different prices, your own store ends up looking expensive or cheap depending on which shop a customer walked past, and the brand reads as unpriced rather than premium.
What the number actually is
Your suggested retail price is the price you have decided the product is worth on a shelf, arrived at by looking at what comparable products sell for in the kind of shop you want to be in, then checked against your cost and your wholesale price.
Different traditions call it different things. Recommended retail, suggested retail, list price. The abbreviations vary by country and none of them change what it is: a published recommendation.
Sitting next to it is a different idea entirely, which is a minimum advertised price policy. That governs the price a reseller may advertise the product at, usually online, rather than the price they sell it at in store. It is a stricter instrument with real legal texture, and a small brand with twenty boutique accounts almost never needs one. What a small brand needs is one clear number, stated everywhere, applied to itself as well.
How to set the number
Start at the shelf, not the spreadsheet.
Walk into three shops that could plausibly stock you and write down what the equivalent products cost. Dog treats make this easy: a small-batch biscuit in an independent pet shop might sit between ten and fourteen dollars a bag, with the own-brand at seven and the imported one at eighteen. That band is your answer.
Pick a number inside the band that matches where you want to sit. Then check it twice.
Halve it. If a twelve-dollar bag wholesales at six, does six cover your landed cost with enough left over to be worth packing. On a bag with a landed cost of two dollars forty, yes comfortably. On a landed cost of four, no.
Then look at the price from the shop's side. A twelve-dollar bag bought at six gives them six dollars on each one, which is the margin they need to justify shelf space. Cut into that and you become the brand they carry until something easier comes along. Why the two numbers move together is set out in wholesale price vs retail price.
Finally, pick a price that ends sensibly. Twelve or twelve fifty, not eleven eighty-seven. Shops round awkward numbers themselves, and once they are rounding, they are pricing.
Where the number has to appear
In five places, all saying the same thing.
On the line sheet, in its own column next to the wholesale price and the case price, so a buyer can see their margin without doing arithmetic. That column is one of the non-negotiable parts of a wholesale line sheet.
On the packing slip in every box, so the person unpacking knows what to write on the shelf label.
On a small card with the first order, because whoever prices the shelf is often not whoever placed the order.
On your own website's retail listing, which is the strongest signal of all, because a customer with a phone will check.
And on the product itself if your category does that. Printed prices are common on books, cards and some food, and they end the conversation permanently.
What you can and cannot enforce
You cannot, in most markets, dictate the price an independent business charges for goods it now owns. Agreements that fix resale prices are treated seriously by competition regulators in a lot of places, and a small brand should not go near one.
What you can do is substantial anyway.
You can publish a suggested price and repeat it consistently.
You can decide who to sell to. Choosing not to accept further orders from an account that habitually discounts is generally your call, though how far that goes varies by jurisdiction and it is worth a proper conversation with a lawyer before you build a policy around it.
You can control the terms of trade you offer, including whether an account gets volume tiers or covered freight, and you can reserve the deeper tiers for accounts that order at the depth those tiers are meant for.
You can decline to supply resellers whose whole model is undercutting, which is usually not a boutique at all but an online reseller. That situation, and the rules worth setting before you sign accounts, is covered in retail and resale.
And you can ask. A short, friendly message pointing out that the rest of your stockists sell at twelve resolves most cases, because the shop was usually guessing rather than competing.
When a shop prices above or below
Below is the one brands notice, and it is worth understanding why it happens before reacting.
Sometimes the shop is clearing stock that did not move, which is a sell-through problem you can help with rather than a pricing dispute. Sometimes they never knew the number because nothing in the box told them. Sometimes they are using your product as a loss leader because it is recognisable, which is flattering and corrosive at the same time.
Above happens too, especially in tourist areas or high-rent streets, and it bothers brands less than it should. A product priced well above your stated retail in one shop makes every other stockist look like a discounter and makes your own store look mispriced.
In both directions, the response is the same shape: find out why, restate the number, and treat a repeated pattern as a fact about whether you want that account rather than a fight to win.
Suggested retail and your own store
The fastest way to lose a stockist is to undercut them on your own site.
If your stated retail on dog treats is twelve dollars, your store sells them at twelve dollars. Not eleven, not ten with a code that is permanently on the homepage. A shop that just bought forty bags and then sees a customer pull up your site in the aisle at ten dollars will not reorder, and they will tell other shop owners why.
Sales and promotions are still possible, they just need to look like something other than a lower price. Bundles that shops do not stock. Gift sets. New colours first. A subscription. Your own store competes on range and experience, not on being cheaper than the people selling for you.
The same applies to marketplaces and to anywhere else you sell direct. One retail price, everywhere, including in the places you forget you are listed.
Changing the price without upsetting accounts
Prices move. The way to move them without damaging accounts is to be dull and early about it.
Give at least a month of notice, in writing, to every stockist. State the new wholesale price, the new suggested retail, and the date.
Let existing orders ship at the old price, and let accounts place one last order at the old number if they want to. They will, and it pulls revenue forward.
Change both numbers together. Raising wholesale while leaving suggested retail alone silently squeezes the shop's margin, which is the change they actually notice.
And do it at a sensible moment in the calendar, ideally when you reprint the line sheet, not three weeks before a season when every buyer is placing orders. If the increase is meant to be absorbed rather than passed on, say so plainly, and keep any sweetener explicitly temporary so it does not become the new baseline. Which incentives are worth giving is in wholesale discount.
Questions brands ask about suggested retail price
Does the suggested price have to be the same in every country? No, and it usually cannot be, because duty, freight and local shelf expectations differ. Publish a separate number per market rather than converting yours.
Should the wholesale price be visible on the same sheet as the retail one? Yes, on the line sheet a buyer sees. Never on anything a consumer can reach.
What if a big account wants a lower retail price? That is a request for a lower wholesale price wearing a costume. Answer it as a volume question, with a published tier they can reach or not.
How do I even know what the shelf band is for my product? Look at shops that already stock things like it. Pasting a product link into WholesalePilot previews the retailers and distributors carrying comparable items, which gives you both the price band and the list of accounts to approach with it.