Garment Costing: How to know you’ve got a fair price

So let’s just pretty much get stuck straight into looking at a costing sheet!

So here we go.

This is a costing sheet here’s an example of what one looks like.

So, yeah, so it’s not too scary! The top section has all of your product information – normally there’s an image to remind you of what product is,  the style number, how much quantity you’re asking for, et cetera. So that’s just simply an explanatory top section.

Then the bit that you really should be studying, looking out for is this section. So as you can see the normal broken into stages.

So the first one is simply looking at the fabric.

So how much does the fabric cost and actually how much does it cost to make it? This is all about the fabric and the make the next bit is any of the added extras.

So the buttons and the zippers, um, packaging label.

So all of the added extras have gone on top of the fabric and the make to actually make your garment.

This is looking at a Chinese supplier, so always be aware of your currency, but generally, these costing sheets should convert into your currency, a local exchange rate.

So this shirt is overall costing 74 RMB. Is that good? Does that scream alarm bells immediately as a quick sanity check?

Overall it’s $29 Australian dollars to make this shirt.

You’d already be starting to think. Hmm. I knew I was thinking of selling this for 99. Therefore does a third seem reasonable?

Yes.

As an immediate summary, that’s coming close to 70% margin.

That’s not too bad.

So you’d be looking at any of these entries to say, okay, a dying surcharge is your government died?

Yes. Okay. That’s not that bad.

Why is there a surcharge of 80 cents per unit? That’s not too, um, too high, so that’s okay.

So pretty much you’d be looking at the cost of any of the really high price points.

So here would be 61 RMB for the fabric. Does that seem reasonable? Is it a special fabric is polyester.

So that would be something you’d check.

And also you’d run down any of these to make sure that do you have adjusters in your design, make sure that they haven’t added something on there that wasn’t in your design spec.

So this is pretty much where line by line you would do a sanity check to make sure that everything you asked for has actually been costed and it’s reasonable.

Also, you check the overall consumption in meters to, to seem, does that seem accurate? Was there a lot of fullness in your shirt, which here we can see the pleating and there’s quite a fabric, therefore, two meters, it seems reasonable consumption?

So pretty much you just check everything you’ve asked for and check the pricing against it.

But pretty much overall, you’re looking to pull out this total cost price. So to produce this shirt it’s actually costing you $29 if you produce a thousand pieces. So that’s another kind of critical check for how many units are they quoting you for that cost price. So if you then place less, no doubt your price will go up. What is that price?

And if you’re not happy with any of them, ask a question. To find out, get, get a reason as to why also if you know that that’s high, um, cost, but the fabric, what can you do to the design to say, remove the full list, that types of the next step questions that you need to be pretty much answering.

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