Pricing · How to
Garment costing sheets explained, with a real cost breakdown from our factory
How a factory builds your price: the costing sheet line by line, fabric consumption and price, trims, CMT, overheads, margin, with a worked t-shirt example, the levers that actually move cost, and how to read a quote like an insider.
Founder, Trishakti Apparel 2 min read
Behind every factory price sits a costing sheet, a one-page calculation the industry guards like a trade secret for no particular reason. Ours is below, opened up with a worked example. A buyer who can read one negotiates better and is very hard to fool.
The sheet, line by line, a 180 gsm combed-cotton tee
| Line | How it’s calculated | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Fabric | Consumption 0.22 kg × fabric price $6.20/kg (incl. dyeing) | $1.36 |
| Trims | Thread, neck tape, labels, tags | $0.22 |
| CMT labour | Cut + sew + finish minutes × line rate | $0.75 |
| Packing | Polybag, carton share | $0.10 |
| Overhead | Factory running costs allocated per piece | $0.30 |
| Margin | The factory’s profit | $0.35–0.55 |
| Ex-factory price | ≈ $3.10–3.30 |
Two things jump out. First, fabric dominates — which is why GSM, yarn choice, and wastage assumptions move your price more than any negotiation over margin. Second, the margin is smaller than buyers imagine: squeezing a factory below its sheet doesn’t create savings, it creates substitutions you’ll discover at inspection.
The levers that genuinely move cost
- GSM: 180 → 240 gsm adds ~33% to the fabric line, the honest cost of “heavyweight”.
- Yarn: combed ring-spun over carded open-end adds cents that buy visible quality. The yarn guide.
- Consumption: oversized fits and printed-panel matching raise fabric use per piece; good marker planning claws some back.
- Quantity: sampling and setup amortise, the 1,000 → 3,000 step matters more than 3,000 → 5,000.
- Colour count: every colour is its own fabric minimum and dye lot, consolidating colours is the cheapest saving nobody takes.
How to use this as a buyer
Sanity-check every quote bottom-up: consumption × plausible fabric price sets a floor no real garment can beat. A “$2.20 hoodie” fails that test instantly — the hoodie version of this maths is here, and the t-shirt overview here. And ask your factory for the breakdown: the ones who’ll show you their sheet are the ones with nothing hidden in it. We quote line-by-line as standard — send a spec and see.
Frequently asked
What is a garment costing sheet?
How is garment cost calculated?
What percentage of a t-shirt’s cost is fabric?
Why do factory quotes differ so much for the same garment?
About the author
Santosh Rijal runs Trishakti Apparel, the export knitwear factory his family built on three decades in Nepal’s fashion trade. He writes about sourcing, duty and production from the factory floor in Gaindakot.