Costing Sheet

Costing is a nightmare when you first start off with your label; it then continues to be vexing and difficult as your label progresses.

However costing, and it’s got to be as accurate as possible, must take place for every garment you make and try to sell. Many designers forget that their time has a value however early on its going to be hard to even cost your time at minimum wage – in the beginning you just want that all important sale.

You will have direct costs for the garment…these are components such as fabric (remember you need to know the width and the price per meter THEN the consumption), how much of the fabric is needed of the fabric for one garment and a lay plan. Other direct costs include the labour i.e. how much does it cost to make a garment or ’run’.  Indirect costs include such expenses such as advertising and marketing, product depreciation, general firm supplies, accounting and payroll services. Then you have overheads, these tend to be fixed so if you had a studio the overheads would be the rent, rates, lighting, telephone charges etc.

You then need to work out your margin that is added onto all the costs. This is such a difficult area to quantify because this margin figure also depends on what the client is prepared to pay and how many the client will buy.  So here you almost need best margin price, lowest you are prepared to go down and then a midway point.  You definitely need to know what your minimum price is because there is absolutely no point in buying business as a loss leader.    

When we work out costings for the Factory we look at the clients price structure e.g. dresses selling for £35 and then we divide by 2.5 and 3 and that roughly gives our range of cost prices.

Remember you can always engineer a garment into price and negotiate on the construction of the garment to hit a specific price point. If you make your “selling sample” or “showman” sample the best quality it can be i.e. French seams, double turned hems, self-fabric shoulder pads then these are your negotiation tools for the correct cost price ie overlock seams (open seams), pin-hemed mesh covered shoulder pads.

This is why costing is just as much an art as it is a science!      

CostingSheet_FashionCaptial_ToTT final