The arithmetic
Markup = (price − cost) ÷ cost × 100. A $38 item sold at $95 carries $57 of profit, which is a 150% markup.
Run the same $57 against the price instead and it is a 60% margin. Both numbers describe one product. They are not the same number, and the gap between them is where most pricing mistakes happen.
What the markup has to survive
The markup you set is not the markup you keep.
Sell that $38/$95 product yourself and $57 lands in your account. Sell it on a marketplace charging a 15% referral fee and $14.25 of the $95 goes to the platform before you see it. Profit falls to $42.75 and the margin falls from 60% to 45%. Once the fee is part of your cost, the markup you are earning is 82%, not 150%.
Nothing about the price changed. Payment processing, free shipping, and returns do the same thing one line at a time.
Keystone, jobber, MAP
Three terms turn up constantly in retail pricing and get used loosely.
Keystone is doubling the cost — a 100% markup, 50% margin. It is what a retailer reaches for when nothing about the product argues for a different number.
Jobber pricing is what a wholesaler charges a retailer. In the standard three-tier chain the manufacturer sells to a jobber, the jobber sells to the retailer at a jobber price, and the retailer keystones off that. A $12 jobber price becomes a $24 shelf price.
MAP, minimum advertised price, is a floor a brand sets on advertised prices. It governs advertising and not what you charge at the register — those are two different things, and treating a MAP policy as if it controlled your margin is how retailers talk themselves into thinner pricing than they meant to set.
Pricing from cost
Price = cost × (1 + markup ÷ 100). $38 at 150% is $95.
If the instruction you were handed was a margin rather than a markup, convert before you multiply: markup = margin ÷ (100 − margin) × 100. A 60% margin target is a 150% markup. Skip that step and "give me 60% margin" becomes a 60% markup — a $60.80 price on the same $38 cost, and a 37.5% margin instead of 60%.
Working back
Cost = price ÷ (1 + markup ÷ 100). At $95 and 150%, that is $95 ÷ 2.5 = $38.
If you are pricing forward and freight or duties arrive on their own invoice, retail markup treats landed cost as a separate input. Once a price exists, profit margin and contribution margin split it into what covers overhead and what is left over, and the discount calculator runs what a promotion does to the same figures.