Build the cost sheet of one garment: fabric, trims, sewing minutes, finishing and overhead, and see the selling price that covers taxes, commissions and the margin you want.
Pre-sizing and estimating tool: results do not replace design, calculations or reports signed by a licensed professional, nor verification against the applicable codes and standards.
Cost items of one garment, from largest to smallest, with the cumulative percentage.
How the price of one garment splits into production cost, fixed overhead, taxes, selling costs and profit.
Take this page’s results to another calculator with the fields already filled in.
The calculation report gathers this page's inputs, results, equations, assumptions and references, with fields for project, engineer and revision. The full report also includes the charts and interpretations, in color. In the print dialog, choose Save as PDF.
It builds the cost sheet of one garment: fabric, trims, sewing minutes, cutting and finishing, packaging, losses and fixed overhead. Then it works out the selling price that covers taxes, selling costs and the margin you want, and the equivalent markup. Use it to launch a style, review your price list or choose between in-house sewing and a contractor.
Divide the monthly sewing payroll with burden by the standard minutes the team actually produces: operators × days × minutes per day × efficiency. In the example, $41,600 ÷ (13 × 21 × 450 min × 75%) gives $0.452 per minute. With a 4.5-minute SAM, sewing costs $2.03 per garment.
The T-shirt uses 0.75 yd of jersey at $5.50/yd ($4.13), $0.27 of trims, $2.03 of sewing, $0.68 of cutting and finishing, $0.22 of losses, $0.25 of packaging and $2.00 of overhead: a cost of $9.57. With 10% selling costs and a 20% margin, price is $9.57 ÷ 0.70 = $13.68, a 1.43 markup.
Because commissions, fees and margin are charged on the price, not on cost. Adding 30% to the example cost would give $12.45, and profit per garment would drop from $2.74 to about $1.63. Pricing from the margin on sales (cost ÷ 0.70) leaves exactly the margin you asked for after paying selling costs.
SAM comes from time studies of the operations or from predetermined time systems such as GSD; the sewing line calculator adds up the operation list. Efficiency is output in standard minutes divided by minutes paid, measured over a month: sewing lines usually run between 50% and 80%. Using 100% understates sewing cost.
Compare the contractor price with in-house sewing cost (SAM × cost per minute). In the example, in-house sewing comes to $2.03 per garment; a $2.50 contractor only pays off when capacity is short, because the payroll is still there. Also add the contractor’s freight, lead time and quality control.
It is an estimate: it leaves out tax credits, freight, inventory financing and sales of seconds. Overhead is spread over the volume entered; if volume falls, cost rises. Before setting a final price, confirm taxes with your accountant and review the times with production.
Important notice: Indus Metrics tools produce estimates and pre-sizing results from the data you enter and from published engineering methods. They do not replace design, calculations or reports signed by a licensed professional engineer (PE), nor verification against the applicable codes, standards and regulations, such as OSHA rules and the ASME codes. Material and fuel properties vary: check manufacturer data or your own process analyses before deciding. By using this site you agree to the Terms of Use.
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