Activewear Manufacturing Cost Breakdown
A quoted unit price is a sum of seven or eight cost lines. Buyers who know the lines negotiate the ones that matter and stop wasting time on the ones that do not.
The cost lines in a typical activewear FOB price
Fabric is usually the largest single line and it is driven by composition and GSM. Nylon-spandex at 230 GSM costs materially more per kilogram than polyester-spandex at 190 GSM, and a higher GSM means more kilograms per garment. Those two effects multiply.
Cutting and sewing is the labour line. It rises with the number of panels, the number of seams, and the difficulty of the seam — a flatlock or bonded construction takes longer than a simple overlock and needs a more skilled operator.
Trims are small in total but volatile per item: elastic, zippers, drawcords, moulded hardware, labels, hangtags. Custom tooling appears here as a one-time charge rather than a per-unit cost.
Dyeing and finishing sits either inside the fabric price (piece-dyed at the mill) or appears separately for garment dyeing. Custom Pantone matching adds a lab dip charge and can add a minimum lot.
Testing and compliance is a real line for export orders — fibre content, colourfastness, shrinkage, and where required performance tests. It is charged per test, per colour, and the cost is not trivial when a style has four colours.
Packaging and cartons are quoted to your spec. Retail-ready polybags with printed headers, individual tissue, size stickers — each addition is small per unit and adds up over a run.
Factory margin and overhead sit on top. A quote that looks unusually low is usually a quote with a thinner margin, which shows up later as slower response when something goes wrong.
Which levers genuinely move the price
Fabric GSM and composition. Dropping from 230 to 190 GSM on the same construction is the single biggest lever available, and most buyers cannot tell the difference in wear for a general-training product.
Panels and seams. Every additional panel is a cut, a seam, a join and a point of failure. A style built from three panels instead of six is cheaper to make and often fits better.
Colour count. Each colour carries its own dye lot, its own lab dip and its own test charge. Reducing four colours to two can move the landed cost more than negotiating the sewing rate.
Quantity. Setup costs amortise over the run. The difference between a small first order and a repeat order on the same style is largely the setup being already paid.
Trim standard. Stock elastic and stock zippers versus custom-moulded hardware. The visual difference is small; the cost difference is not.
Levers that do not move the price, despite the folklore
Haggling on the sewing line. It moves a few percent at best, and it moves the wrong way — the factory recovers it in thread, in inspection time, or in the next quotation.
Switching factory on the same spec. FOB prices for identical specifications cluster tightly, because the inputs are the same. A materially lower quote for the same spec usually means a different spec, not a better deal.
Consolidating shipments. Freight consolidation affects landed cost, not FOB. It is worth doing, but it is not a manufacturing negotiation.
What a quote from us actually contains
We quote against a filled development sheet and break the price into fabric, make, trims, testing and packaging, so you can see which line is driving the number. If a line looks high we will say why — a bonded seam, a custom dye, a six-panel construction.
Where a target price is below what the spec can deliver, we will say so and show the two or three changes that would close the gap, rather than quoting a number that cannot be held at bulk.
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