The unit price a factory quotes you is roughly half of what a first clothing run costs. The other half arrives later, in pieces, from people you have not spoken to yet: the freight forwarder, customs, the broker, the photographer, and the customers who send things back.
Here are all eleven lines, including the four that end launches.
What are the eleven costs?
| # | Cost | How it is priced | Planned for? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sample | Per style, per colourway. Budget two rounds | Usually |
| 2 | Fabric | Per kilo, not per garment. Heavy fabric costs double | Yes |
| 3 | Cut and make | Per piece, set by construction | Yes |
| 4 | Trims | Per item, each with its own minimum | Rarely |
| 5 | Decoration setup | Flat per screen or plate, regardless of quantity | Rarely |
| 6 | Freight | Air by weight, sea by volume | Sometimes |
| 7 | Duty | Percentage of goods value, set by fibre and origin | Rarely |
| 8 | Customs fees | Merchandise processing, minimum $33.58 per entry. Harbour maintenance 0.125% by sea | No |
| 9 | Customs broker | Flat fee per entry. Brutal on a small shipment | No |
| 10 | Photography | Per shoot. You cannot sell what you cannot show | No |
| 11 | Returns and seconds | A percentage of what you sell | No |
Why does a small run cost more per unit?
Because roughly half of those lines do not shrink when your order does.
A screen print screen costs the same for 25 pieces as for 1,000. A sewing line setup costs the same. A pattern costs the same. A customs entry costs the same. A photoshoot costs the same. All of that divides across however many pieces you ordered, which is why a 25 piece run has a higher unit cost than a 250 piece run of the identical garment.
This is the real trade in a low minimum, and it is usually described dishonestly. A low minimum does not make your product cheap. It makes being wrong survivable. Twenty five pieces in a colour nobody wanted is a lesson. Three hundred is a cupboard.
A worked example of landed cost
The numbers below are arithmetic, not a quote. We do not publish prices, and the $12 starting figure is invented to show you how the stack behaves. The duty and fee figures are real and current at September 2026. Your own figures will differ. The shape will not.
Say 100 cotton hoodies, one colourway, into the US by air, at a hypothetical $12 at the factory gate.
| Line | Calculation | Total | Per unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goods, FOB | 100 x $12 | $1,200.00 | $12.00 |
| Air freight | ~70kg at a hypothetical $6/kg | $420.00 | $4.20 |
| Base duty, cotton knit | 16.5% of $1,200 | $198.00 | $1.98 |
| Country surcharge | 10% of $1,200 in this example | $120.00 | $1.20 |
| Merchandise processing fee | The $33.58 minimum, not the percentage | $33.58 | $0.34 |
| Customs broker | One flat entry fee, say $150 | $150.00 | $1.50 |
| Landed | $2,121.58 | $21.22 |
A $12 garment lands at $21.22. That is a 77 per cent increase before you have taken a photograph or paid for a website, and none of it was in the quote.
Four things to notice.
The MPF is a minimum, not a percentage. The 0.3464 per cent rate only governs between roughly $9,700 and $188,000 of entered value. Below that you pay the $33.58 floor. On this shipment the percentage would have been $4.16, so the small order pays eight times what the formula suggests. Small shipments are punished by nearly every fixed cost in this table, and this is the one nobody sees coming.
The broker’s fee is flat per entry. $1.50 a unit on 100 pieces, 15 cents a unit on 1,000. Combined with the MPF floor, that is the strongest arithmetic argument for ordering slightly more than you think you need, or for consolidating two styles into one shipment.
The surcharge line is real and it moves. Ten per cent is used here because that is what currently applies to several South Asian origins, including ours, at the time of writing. It has been restructured more than once in the last two years. Get the live figure for your origin from a broker rather than from any article, including this one.
Fibre content is worth $1.86 a unit. Had that hoodie been 50/50 polyester rather than cotton, base duty would have been 32 per cent instead of 16.5, adding $186 to the entry for a decision most brands make on feel.
What should you spend on before you spend on stock?
In this order.
- Proof that somebody will buy. A print on demand run, a pre-order, a waiting list. Cheaper than being right for the wrong reason.
- The sample. One good garment in your hands is worth more than any amount of planning, and it is the only thing that tells you whether your specification says what you meant.
- Photography. Budget it before the stock, not after, because the stock cannot sell without it and everybody discovers this at the same late moment.
- Stock. Last, and smaller than you want.
The commonest failure we see is not a bad product. It is a brand that spent everything on stock, has 300 hoodies in a hallway, and no money left to photograph them.
Four lines people forget, and what to do about each
| Forgotten cost | Why it bites | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Trim minimums | Woven labels often start at 500 or 1,000 | Buy once, carry them across runs. Labels do not expire |
| Duty and surcharge | Two layers, both a percentage of goods value, and the second one moves | Get the HTS code and the live rate before approving fabric |
| Broker fee and MPF floor | Both flat per entry, so tiny shipments pay the most per unit | Consolidate. One shipment of two styles beats two shipments |
| Seconds | Some pieces will not be sellable at full price | Price a few in. Sell them as seconds rather than binning them |
What we can tell you
We do not publish prices, because a price without a specification is a number designed to get you into a conversation rather than to inform you. What we publish instead is everything you need to plan around: minimum 25 pieces per colourway with any size mix, samples in 8 to 10 days, bulk in 15 days from the day you approve.
Send us the garment, the fabric, the quantity and the destination country, and you get a real quote with the fibre content stated so you can check your own duty position.
We are not the cheapest. We are the one that tells you what the number actually includes.
Next: how country and fibre change your duty, and why the minimum is counted per colourway.
Send us what you want made and we will quote it landed.