Fabric Cost Per Garment Calculator

A yardage figure tells you how many metres to cut. It does not tell you what those metres cost. This calculator completes the last step of costing: it takes consumption, fabric weight and the price you have been quoted and returns the fabric cost of one garment, so it can sit next to the labour and trim lines in your costing sheet.

Cost Is a Different Question from Consumption

Most fabric calculators answer a consumption question: how many metres do I need. That is the first question, not the last one. The costing question is what those metres cost, and it needs three inputs rather than two — consumption, weight and price.

We already have a garment yardage calculator that answers the consumption side. This page deliberately does not overlap with it. The yardage tool answers “how many yards or metres”; this one answers “how much does the fabric add to the cost of the garment”. If you are building a costing sheet, you need both, and you need them not to be the same number.

Three Inputs, One Result

Consumption

Consumption is the marker length for one garment including the cutting lay, before wastage. It comes from a marker, not from a formula, and it moves with every design change. A garment with a full back panel and a gathered yoke can easily consume 30 percent more than a flat front-and-back version of the same size.

Weight and width

Fabric weight in GSM and open width in centimetres give grams per metre, which is what converts metres into kilograms. This matters more than it looks: two fabrics with the same price per metre can differ by 40 percent in weight, and freight is charged on weight. A heavy fabric at the same price is more expensive to ship than a light one.

Price per metre

Use the price you were actually quoted, not a target. If you are comparing an EXW quote against an FOB quote, convert them to the same basis first — FOB includes inland handling and export packing that EXW does not, and the difference is routinely 4 to 8 percent of the goods value.

Wastage and Where It Shows Up

Cutting room wastage is real and it is normally 5 to 12 percent for apparel. Anything above 12 percent means the marker is not nesting well, and that is worth a conversation with the cutting room rather than a price adjustment. Put the wastage into the cost per piece, not into a separate line, because it is a cost of the same garment.

One caution on double counting: if your consumption figure came from a marker report that already includes wastage, do not add it again. Ask whether the reported consumption is net of marker waste or includes it. This is a common source of 8 percent errors in costing sheets.

Reading the Result

Fabric cost as a share of retail normally lands between 8 and 15 percent for apparel. Above 20 percent, either the fabric is too heavy for the price point, the consumption is high, or the retail target is unrealistic. All three are worth knowing before you commit, and the last one is the most common.

Where weight binds, note that freight is a second cost line. A 400 GSM fabric at the same price per metre as a 200 GSM one weighs twice as much and costs twice as much to ship, so the per-metre price is not the whole picture. The landed cost calculator takes over from here and adds freight, duty and broker fees.