How to cost your bra
Things to take into consideration when costing are direct costs and indirect costs (your overheads), your hurdle rate (how much profit you need to make ) what your competitors are charging ie where do you want to position yourself in the market and what the customer is willing to pay (what benefit are they paying for when they buy from you?).
The methods I’m showing you here, is your cost from the direct costs, with the elastics and straps, it’s just a case of measuring the bra, if you haven’t a sample to measure at the end of this blog I’ll show you a way to get measurements from your pattern.
So, for this cost I measured the sample for the trims and notions and in the last blog I worked out the fabric costs which you can find here “How to work out your fabric consumption” .
The bra I measured uses 80cm straps and 41cm 8mm elastic (top cup) and 106cm 13mm elastic (underarm and under-band).
You can either work out everything out of paper by ‘x’ the length (m) of elastics etc with the cost (£) to work out the amount and cost.
For example the straps cost £0.96 so it would be 0.96x.80= £0.77 (mx£=total cost)
So for every bra you make it will cost you £0.77 on the straps.
Instead of working out each part separately I did it automatically on a cost sheet that I designed, which provides the basic cost. This can be found here: Automatic costing sheet or if you want a template but to work it out manually then there is a PDF available here: Manual cost sheets
So back to working out the costs.
A basic cost would be : Costs of fabrics + trims + labour + business overheads + profit = Garment costs
Remember you shouldn’t just base your cost on the basic cost as these only take into account the direct cost not the indirect costs (your overheads). You also need to have an idea of your hurdle rates (how much profit you want to make) as we know that without profit and cashflow you have no business.
Remember mark-ups and margin are two very different things. Also another to note is:
Gross profit is Selling price - Direct costs (so your basic costs)
And Net profit is gross profit - Indirect costs (your overheads)
Net profit is usually the money you pump back into the business to get it going.
After deducting all of your direct and indirect costs (such as rent in your studio) you are left with your profit.
I mention these for you to be aware from the off set about what costing means for your lingerie brand.
So if we were to put all the measurements - the measurements from the elastics and the fabric consumption from the last I took from my last blog and prices into my cost sheet that information it would look like this. (screen shot taken from the costing sheet)
So from this costing sheet you can see that the materials for the bra was £12.08 if I were to go with a UK manufacturer the cost would be £34.08, If I sold the bra at x3 the indirect costs it would £102.25
IF YOU HAVEN’T A SAMPLE
If you haven’t a sample, the easiest way to work out elastics is measure the pattern take off seam allowance and reduce the measurement by approx 3%.
So if this was the case the top cup pattern measures 24.5 cm take away 1.2cm seam allowance = 23.2cm and then take away 3% (0.7cm) = 22.5cm
Full over the Straps I usually start at 37cm so 37x2 = 74cm then add the part that goes up the back wing (8cmx2) so total = 90cm
With the total of elastics I usually add approx 5% which allows for errors, the run off and on of elastics.
All the notions are easy to add up, you literally just count how many rings/sliders/bows/hook and eye you have the bra, so with this design one bra has two rings, two sliders and one (55mm) hook and eye, two underwires and approx 90cm of wire-casing to get a rough idea of your cost.
Below is the automatic costing sheet
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