What the numbers say
Free shipping from $200.00, two units. Below it the customer pays $9.29, the 1 lb label passed through. One unit paying shipping keeps $10.41; two units shipped free keep $19.09.
Every order that tops up from one unit to two earns $8.68 more. Every order that was already at or above the threshold stops paying its $9.29 of shipping and buys nothing extra, which costs $7.23 of margin: the shipping, less the card fees and refund reserve it no longer carries.
So the threshold pays when the top-ups outnumber the orders that already qualify by enough to cover them. The free-shipping threshold calculator does that count with your order values.
The cost structure, and where it comes from
| Price | $100.00, a pair of sneakers. Allbirds, Men's Tree Runner, read 13 October 2026 |
|---|---|
| Unit cost | $59.00. From the income statement: revenue $152.5 million, gross profit $62.6 million, a gross margin of 41.0%. Allbirds (Smartbird, Inc.), annual report (Form 10-K) for the year ended 2025-12-31, read 13 October 2026 |
| Pick and pack | $3.20 per order and $0.48 for each extra item. Fulfill.com, 3PL pricing benchmarks (The Fulfillment Advisor 2025 survey of 600+ warehouses), read 23 September 2026 |
| Shipping label | USPS Ground Advantage, commercial, Zone 5, by weight rounded up to the pound: 1 lb $9.29 · 2 lb $10.50 · 3 lb $12.12 · 4 lb $13.89 · 5 lb $14.53. Packed weight is an assumption: 2.5 lb per unit. USPS Notice 123, USPS Ground Advantage Commercial, Zone 5 (effective 4 October 2026), read 13 October 2026 |
| Card fees | 2.9% + $0.30 per order: Shopify Payments' online rate for a standard card on the Basic plan in the United States. Higher plans pay a lower rate, and premium cards a higher one. Shopify's pricing page for the United States, online standard card rates, read 12 October 2026 Rates by plan and country |
| Refund reserve | 19.3%, NRF's estimate of online sales returned in 2025, across all categories. NRF and Happy Returns, 2025 Retail Returns Landscape (15 October 2025), read 23 September 2026 |
| Gift | A pair of socks: unit cost $8.85, retail $15.00. A $15 pair of socks, costed at Allbirds' reported gross margin. |
The offer, as an agent writes it
An agent writes this offer as one document for Offer Suite's API, validated against the offer schema. Below is one option of it: what the buyer gets and the price it promises. Offer Suite checks with a real cart that checkout charges exactly the prices above.
Show one option 2 options · excerpt
{
"key": "two-ship-free",
"display": {
"title": "2 units, free shipping"
},
"lines": [
{
"role": "main",
"quantity": 2,
"purchase": {
"type": "one_time"
}
}
],
"pricing": {
"promise": {
"firstChargeCents": 20000,
"renewalChargeCents": null
}
}
}How Offer Suite validates, versions and publishes a document like this one: offer documents.
Questions
Is a free shipping threshold profitable for footwear brands?
On these costs an order that tops up from one unit to two to ship free earns $8.68 more, and an order that already qualified gives up $7.23. It is profitable when the first kind outnumber the second by enough.
What free-shipping threshold should footwear brands set?
This page prices one at two units, $200.00: one unit paying $9.29 for shipping keeps $10.41, and two shipped free keep $19.09. A threshold just above what most orders already spend gives the fewest orders free shipping for nothing.