Ifeoma imports rechargeable standing fans and sells them from a shop in Onitsha. She brings in 150 units at a time, roughly one container-share a month, and sells them at ₦29,500 each.
Her supplier in Guangzhou charges $8.00 a fan. At ₦1,520 to the dollar, that is ₦12,160. She sells at ₦29,500. When anyone asks how business is going, she does the sum in her head (₦29,500 minus ₦12,160) and answers that she is making about ₦17,000 a fan.
She is not. On her last shipment she made ₦4,536 a fan before shop costs, and by the time her rent and diesel came out of it she was closer to ₦2,400.
Nothing about her business is broken. Her arithmetic is. The $8 on the supplier's invoice is the smallest part of what a fan costs her by the time it reaches her shelf.
The number that matters is landed cost: every naira you spend to get one sellable unit into your own warehouse. Here is Ifeoma's real invoice trail for 150 fans, at ₦1,520 to the dollar.
Three fans in every shipment arrive cracked or with a dead battery, so she has 147 sellable units, not 150. That makes her landed cost ₦23,031 per fan, not ₦12,160.
The supplier's price was 54% of what the goods actually cost her. Duty, levies, import VAT, clearing and haulage made up the other 46%. If you price off the invoice from your supplier, you are pricing off roughly half your cost base.
Duty and levy rates vary by HS code: fans are not shoes, and shoes are not laptops. The Nigeria Customs Service has also changed which port charges apply more than once in recent years. Take the rates above as an example of the shape of the calculation, not as your numbers. Ask your clearing agent for the itemised breakdown on your last PAAR and use those figures.
One line on that table deserves a note. Every importer pays import VAT at the port. Ifeoma's business meets the small business tests (turnover about ₦52 million a year, fixed assets well under ₦250 million, and she sells goods, not professional services), so she does not charge VAT on her sales and cannot claim the ₦215,763 back. For her it is simply a cost, and it belongs in her landed cost like everything else. A business that charges VAT treats that line differently. If you are unsure which side you fall on, our guide to VAT for Nigerian MSMEs walks through the test, and you can ask Lex, the tax assistant inside Lucrive, about your own situation.
Landed cost gets the fan into the shop. It does not pay for the shop.
Ifeoma has one assistant on ₦90,000 a month, and she works the counter herself six days a week. Her own time is worth at least ₦200,000 a month, and if she does not cost it, her salary quietly comes out of her profit. Her rent, diesel, electricity, internet and POS charges come to ₦310,000 a month.
₦27,073 is her floor: the price at which she breaks even and takes nothing home. She sells at ₦29,500.
The Lucrive Pricing Calculator is built around exactly this five-step shape, and it is worth mapping Ifeoma's numbers onto it so you can run your own:
At a 20% margin with a 5% buffer, the recommended price comes back as ₦34,112. There is also a Diagnose Past Performance section where you enter what you charge today. Ifeoma enters ₦29,500 and gets a plain verdict: underpriced, 13.5% below recommended.
The difference is not academic.
Same shipment, same shop, same hours. One number changed.
Now the part that catches importers hardest.
Ifeoma paid ₦1,520 to the dollar for that shipment. Her next order will be paid at about ₦1,680. Every naira of profit she makes today has to buy the next container, and the next container is more expensive.
Here is the same 150 fans at ₦1,680.
The exchange rate moved 10.5%. Her landed cost per fan moved ₦2,216. Her new floor (cost plus labour plus overhead) is ₦29,289.
She is still selling at ₦29,500.
At the rate she will actually pay for her next container, Ifeoma is making ₦211 a fan. Not ₦17,000. Not ₦4,536. ₦211. She has not lowered her price, lost a customer, or made a single mistake in the shop. The rate moved, and her price did not.
There is a second thing buried in that table. Duty, the levies and import VAT are all charged on the naira value of the goods, so when the rate moves they move with it. For every ₦1 the naira CIF value rises, Ifeoma's landed cost rises by about ₦1.32 once duty, ETLS, CISS, surcharge and VAT have each taken their cut. The exchange rate does not hit you once. It hits you, and then the tariff multiplies it.
This is why "I will adjust my price when the rate settles" is the most expensive sentence in Nigerian importing. Your price has to be set against replacement cost, what it will cost to buy the same goods again, not against the historical cost sitting in your bank statement. Anything else is slowly selling your own working capital.
Re-run the numbers every time you order, not every time you worry. Ifeoma saves each costing as a named scenario in the calculator. When the rate moves, she opens the saved version, changes one figure (the naira CIF value) and reads off the new recommended price in under two minutes. That turns an hour of dread into a routine.
Build the FX move into the buffer, not into hope. The safety buffer field exists for the costs you cannot see yet, and on imported goods the biggest one is the rate on your next order. If the naira has moved 8–10% in each of the last few quarters, a 5% buffer is optimistic. On the Professional plan the buffer goes up to 25% for this exact reason.
Keep the clearing and haulage invoices where you can find them. Every naira of duty, agent fees, terminal charges and haulage is a deductible business cost, and it is also next month's costing input. Record each one in the expense log in Lucrive as it happens, tagged to the right category. When you sit down to reprice, the numbers are already there instead of in a WhatsApp thread with your agent.
If you genuinely cannot raise the price, change the offer instead of eating the loss. Bring in a smaller pack size at a lower price point. Drop the slowest-moving colour and put the freed-up capital into the fastest. Add a fitted battery pack as a paid extra rather than absorbing it. Our guide on how to raise your prices without losing customers covers the conversation itself, and if you also invoice buyers abroad, invoicing international clients covers the other direction of the same problem.
Ifeoma moved her price to ₦34,500 over two months, ₦32,000 first and then ₦34,500, and lost two of her fourteen regular retailers. She still makes more each month with twelve retailers than she did with fourteen, because every fan now pays for the next container.
The exchange rate is not under your control. What you charge is. Those are different problems, and only one of them is yours to solve.
Work out the true landed cost and the right selling price for your imported goods with the free Lucrive Pricing Calculator. No payment details needed.
People and businesses in our examples are illustrative, not real Lucrive customers. Figures are worked examples: confirm your own position with a qualified tax adviser.