The $18 Basketball That Sells for $89.95
Wilson’s Evolution basketball costs $89.95. Want to know how much it actually costs to make?
I dug into freight quotes, tariff schedules, import records, and manufacturer pricing to give it a quick guess.
The Product
The product in question is a Wilson Evolution basketball [link] that sells for $89.95.
The Evolution is made with microfiber composite leather, a cushion rubber core, and premium retail packaging.
Basketball players are very picky when it comes to basketballs, and Wilson is the clear #1 trusted brand, allowing them to have some pricing power.
Manufacturing (+$8)
I started out by going on a website called Import Yeti to find out where their products are made.
Wilson has many different types of product lines, but based on the data my assumption is that the product is made in China.
Knowing this information, I did a quick search on Alibaba to find comparables.
Wilson’s basketball is definitely more premium, so the cost to make it could easily be 2-3x what I saw on Alibaba.
However, since Wilson is at quite a large scale, I made a very rough guess that their FOB cost is $8 per unit.
Tariffs (+$3.38)
I found their HTS code is 9506.62.8020 through https://hts.usitc.gov/
Unfortunately, the government website does a poor job of summarizing the actual rate costs, so I tried to figure it out with Chat GPT, but that didn’t work either.
So, I used a tool called https://www.simplyduty.com/ that gives you 5 free calculations per day and it worked great.
The current tariff rate for a basketball coming from China is 42.3%, made up of a 12.3% baseline tariff, the 10% reciprocal tariff, and the 20% fentanyl tariff.
Although tariffs have certainly shown it’s variability, the cost to import today for WIlson would be $3.38 per unit.
Ocean Freight (+$0.54)
www.importyeti.com
The photo on the left shows that Wilson has quite a lot of shipping lanes globally.
For the sake of simplicity, I’ve assumed that their basketballs all come from China, and are distributed from 4 locations in the USA - Los Angeles, Houston, Nashville, and New York.
I got an instant quote for 1 40ft container from Xiamen to Los Angeles, door to door, for $2760 using https://ship4wd.com/
The dimensions of an inflated packaged basketball about 10x10x10 inches, and weighs around 2lbs, but you can fit 2-3x more units deflated!
Doing the math, they probably fit around 6500 units per container.
So the freight portion of the cost is about $3500/6500 (rough numbers) for a total of $0.54 per unit.
That’s 2-3x cheaper than an inflated, packaged version. Is there any way for you to fit more product in your container?
Pick & Pack (+$1.50)
Since they have their own distribution centers, they don’t need to pay a 3pl, but let’s bake in the costs for processing costs across picking, packing, and labeling the products.
They need to source materials and package the basketball in a branded box + labeling.
Depending on if they send the basketballs to consumers inflated or deflated, there may be a slight labor cost to inflate the basketballs.
Final Mile Delivery (+$5)
For a 2lb, 10x10x10 inch product, they are likely around $5 per ball for zone 2, thanks to Wilson’s distribution scale.
I’m assuming Wilson is sending the basketball at least somewhat inflated for a better customer experience.
Gross Margin (+79.5%)
If you order a basketball from Wilson’s website, here’s the cost structure:
Online Price = $89.95 (shipping included)
Landed Cost = $18.42
Which equals 79.5% gross margin.
If you buy at a retail store, the margins will be less, but still strong.
Basketball players are very picky when it comes to basketballs, and Wilson is the clear #1 trusted brand, allowing them to have some pricing power.
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