What Is Inside a Garment FOB Price? A Cost Breakdown for Buyers

A garment FOB price breakdown has the same parts in every category: fabric, trims, cutting and sewing, value added processes, wastage, packing, factory overhead and margin, plus any sourcing office commission. Fabric is usually the largest single share, and the proportions shift with construction, quantity and product type.

This matters because two quotations that differ by a noticeable amount rarely differ for one reason. They differ because the suppliers made different assumptions about fabric quality, consumption, construction and quantity. Once you can see the stack, the conversation stops being about haggling and becomes about specification.

The proportions below are given as broad ranges on purpose. A knitted basic, a tailored jacket and a washed denim jean do not share a cost profile, and any figure presented as a fixed universal percentage is describing one product and calling it the industry.

What Is Actually Inside a Garment Price?

Every quotation you receive is a stack of separate costs presented as one number. Most of the friction between buyers and suppliers comes from the fact that only one side can see the stack. The parts are always the same, even when the proportions are not.

• Fabric, including the yarn, knitting or weaving, dyeing and finishing.
• Trims and accessories: threads, labels, zips, buttons, elastics, interlinings, hangtags.
• Cutting, making and trimming, which is the labour of turning fabric into a garment.
• Value added processes such as printing, embroidery, applique or garment washing.
• Wastage allowance for cutting loss, shade variation and rejects.
• Packing, polybags, cartons, labelling and barcoding.
• Factory overhead: rent, energy, machinery, sampling, planning and quality staff.
• Factory margin.
• The cost of the sourcing office or agent, where one is involved.
• Freight and logistics, which sit outside the ex factory price and depend on the agreed Incoterm.

Why Does Fabric Usually Dominate the Cost?

In most woven and knitted apparel, fabric is the largest single line in the stack. Broad ranges are more honest than one figure, because the share moves considerably by category. For a plain jersey t shirt or a basic woven shirt, fabric commonly sits somewhere around a third to a half of the ex factory cost. On heavily constructed items such as tailored jackets or technical outerwear the labour share rises and the fabric share falls. On simple knitted basics in a premium yarn, fabric can be more than half.

The reason is consumption. A garment consumes a measurable quantity of fabric, expressed in metres or kilograms per piece, and that consumption is fixed by the pattern and the marker efficiency. If a style consumes a kilogram of fabric and the yarn moves in price, the whole quotation moves with it. A raw material movement cannot be absorbed inside a labour line that is a smaller share of the total.

This is why fabric questions deserve more attention than sewing price questions. A modest change in fabric cost per kilogram moves the garment price more than an equivalent change in the sewing rate. It is also why an unclear fabric specification is the most expensive kind of vagueness in a purchase order. Ask for the composition, weight, finish, consumption per piece, and whether the price assumes a stock quality or a dedicated dyed lot.

What Do Trims and Accessories Really Add?

Trims are individually small and collectively significant. On a basic t shirt the trim package may be a neck tape, a care label, a brand label and a hangtag, and the share of total cost is modest. On a five pocket denim jean with branded buttons, rivets, a leather patch, a woven label and custom hardware, the trim package becomes a real line and can rival the sewing cost.

Two things drive trim cost beyond the item price. The first is minimum order quantities from the trim supplier, which is why a custom branded zip on a 300 piece order behaves very differently from the same zip on a 5,000 piece order. The second is lead time, because a custom trim that takes weeks to produce can become the critical path for the whole delivery. If a quote looks high on a small order, the trim package is often the reason.

How Is the Cutting and Sewing Charge Calculated?

The making charge, often called CMT, is built from the time a garment takes to produce. Factories work from an estimate of the standard minutes required across all operations, multiplied by a cost per minute that reflects wages, social costs, machine time and line efficiency. A simple t shirt runs a handful of operations. A lined jacket runs a long sequence of them, which is why the making charge on tailored product can be several times that of a knitted basic.

What Do Printing, Embroidery, Washing and Finishing Add?

These are added per piece or per placement, and they are usually quoted separately because they often go to specialist subcontractors. Printing is priced by size, number of colours and technique. Embroidery is priced by stitch count and placement. Garment washing on denim is priced by the recipe, and a heavily processed wash with hand sanding and laser work carries a different cost from a simple rinse.

Each external process also adds transport, handling and a step where the goods leave the factory's control, which affects lead time as well as cost, and each carries its own reject rate that the wastage allowance has to cover.

Why Does the Same Style Price Differently at 300 and 3,000 Units?

Because a large part of the stack is not per piece at all. Several costs are incurred once per style or once per order and then divided across whatever quantity you place. At 300 pieces the divisor is small, so every fixed cost lands heavily on each garment.

• Pattern making, grading, marker planning and sample development.
• Line setup, operator training on the style, and the first pieces run slowly while the line balances.
• Fabric dyeing minimums, since a dye lot has a practical minimum and a short order may pay for fabric it does not use.
• Trim minimums for anything branded or custom.
• Printing and embroidery setup, screens, frames and digitising.
• Administration, sampling correspondence and quality planning, which take similar effort at any quantity.

There is also a fabric effect. Mills price by volume and by whether a quality is in stock or made to order, so a short order may take a stock colour or pay a surcharge for a small dye lot while a larger order commissions the exact quality and still pays less per kilogram.

So the honest answer is that the garment is not more expensive, the order is. Knowing which fixed costs apply to your style tells you whether to raise the quantity, simplify the trim package or accept a stock fabric. Low quantity sourcing is workable in Turkey, but it works properly only when the buyer knows which parts of the cost are driving the number.

Where Do Overhead, Margin and the Sourcing Office Sit?

Factory overhead covers everything that keeps the building running and is recovered across production: rent, energy, machinery, maintenance, planners, merchandisers, the sample room and quality staff. It is not padding, and a factory quoting with no overhead recovery usually struggles to deliver on time.

Factory margin sits on top and varies with how full the capacity is and how difficult the buyer is expected to be. A buyer who approves samples quickly, pays on the agreed trigger and shares a forecast is genuinely cheaper for a factory to serve, and over time that shows in the price.

Where a sourcing office is involved, its cost is usually a commission on order value. The structure matters more than the number. When the office is paid by the buyer rather than by the factory, there is no reason to steer the order towards whichever supplier pays more, and the commission is visible in the buyer's own cost model rather than buried in the unit price.

What Should I Ask When a Quote Looks Unusually Low?

A quotation well below the others is information, not a win. Sometimes it is genuine, because the factory has free capacity, already holds the fabric, or runs that exact construction every week. Often it is one of a small set of recurring explanations, and all of them are discoverable by asking.

• A different fabric quality, weight or composition from the one specified.
• A lower consumption assumption, which shows up later as a garment that fits smaller.
• A simplified construction, fewer operations or a cheaper seam finish.
• A stock or substitute trim instead of the branded one.
• Costs moved out of the unit price into extras billed later, such as packing or testing.
• A quantity assumption higher than the one you asked for.
• A term misunderstanding, for example an ex works price compared against a delivered price.

The test is to send every supplier the same tech pack version, quantity, size ratio, packing instruction and Incoterm, and to ask for the price split into fabric, trims, making, processes and packing. Suppliers who produce that breakdown quickly usually understand their own costs.

Tekstil A.Ş. Global has worked in Turkish textiles since 1980 and operates from Atasehir in Istanbul with 48 staff and a network of more than 2,000 verified member manufacturers, which makes it possible to compare a quotation against what comparable factories charge for that construction. Because the commission is paid by the buyer rather than the factory, the cost review is not shaped by which supplier gets the order. Buyers using Hosted Sourcing can also sit in Turkey and go through the breakdown with the factory in person.