"What's the price per piece?" is usually the first question a new brand asks when they start looking at manufacturing in India, and it's also the question that's impossible to answer honestly in a single reply. A T-shirt and a lined jacket are not the same product, a 300-piece order and a 5,000-piece order don't cost the same per unit, and two garments that look identical in a photo can have completely different fabric weights, stitch counts and finishing that change the price by 30% or more. This guide walks through the real cost components that build up a garment's factory price, so you can understand what you're actually paying for — and why a serious supplier will always ask more questions before quoting than a broker will.
Fabric: usually the single largest cost driver
For most garments, fabric is the biggest line item in the cost sheet, often 40–60% of the total factory price. Fabric cost is driven by fiber content (cotton, polyester, viscose, or blends), yarn quality, construction (knit vs. woven, single jersey vs. interlock vs. french terry), GSM (grams per square meter, which determines fabric weight and hand-feel), and finishing treatments like brushing, enzyme washing, or peach finish. A basic 180 GSM single jersey cotton tee uses meaningfully less fabric cost than a heavyweight 280–320 GSM fleece hoodie, and a printed or dyed-to-order fabric costs more than a stock greige fabric dyed in a standard shade. Buyers sourcing from India benefit from the country's deep vertical textile base — cotton is grown and spun domestically at scale, and India is one of the world's largest cotton producers, which keeps cotton and cotton-blend fabric relatively competitive compared with markets that import raw cotton. We go into this comparison in more depth in our guide to cotton vs. blended fabrics.
Cut-Make-Trim (CMT): the labor cost of turning fabric into a garment
CMT covers the labor to cut fabric, sew it into a finished garment, and trim loose threads and finish it for packing. This is where garment complexity matters enormously. A simple crew-neck tee with two seams and a straightforward hem takes far less machine time and skill than a structured jacket with a lining, welt pockets, and multiple panel seams. CMT pricing also reflects the number of operations in the garment — every additional seam, pocket, placket, or panel adds machine time, and machine time is what factories are actually charging for. This is why two garments using identical fabric can have very different total prices once construction complexity is factored in.
Trims and accessories add up faster than buyers expect
Zippers, buttons, drawcords, elastic, interlining, woven or printed labels, hang tags, and even the thread itself are all purchased separately and added to the cost sheet. Individually these look like small numbers — a button might cost a few cents — but a garment with a zipper, six buttons, a drawcord with two cord-locks, interlining in the collar and cuffs, a woven neck label, a care label, and a hang tag can see trims add up to 10–20% of the total unit cost, sometimes more on outerwear. Custom trims (your own branded zipper pull, a custom button embossed with your logo) cost more than generic stock trims and usually carry their own minimum order quantities, separate from the garment MOQ.
Printing, embroidery and other decoration are priced separately from the garment
Screen printing, digital (DTG) printing, embroidery, and appliqué are quoted on top of the base garment cost, and pricing depends on the technique, the number of colors or stitch count, and the placement size. Screen printing generally gets cheaper per unit as quantity rises because of the fixed cost of preparing screens for each color; embroidery is priced more on stitch count and digitizing setup than on quantity. If your design changes between placements — a small chest logo on one style and a full-back print on another — expect the decoration cost to vary between styles even if the base garment is the same. This is a common area where first-time buyers get a quote for the "blank" garment and are surprised when decoration adds a meaningful amount per piece.
Packaging: small line item, but not zero
Individual poly bags, printed inner cartons, tissue paper, branded tags, and export master cartons all carry a cost, usually modest per unit but not negligible at low volumes. Custom printed poly bags or branded packaging inserts also typically carry their own MOQ, separate from your garment order, so a small first order sometimes has to use neutral/unbranded packaging until volumes justify custom packaging tooling.
Why order volume per style and per color changes the unit price
Almost every cost component above has a volume relationship. Fabric is cheaper per meter when you buy a full production lot rather than a small cut length. Screen printing setup costs are spread across more units at higher quantity. Factories price CMT more competitively when a production line can run your style continuously rather than switching between small batches. This is also true within an order — if you split 1,000 units across ten colorways in small batches, you'll generally pay more per unit than if you concentrated the same 1,000 units into two or three colors, because each colorway restart costs the factory changeover time. Buyers exploring smaller first orders should read our dedicated guide on low-MOQ and small-batch garment manufacturing in India, which covers realistic trade-offs at lower volumes.
Why a quote without a tech pack isn't a real number
A tech pack is the technical specification document for a garment — construction details, measurements by size, fabric and trim specifications, stitch types, and artwork placement. Without one, any price you receive is a rough estimate at best, and often just a guess dressed up as a quote. We've seen buyers compare a "$4 tee" quote from one source against a "$7 tee" quote from another and assume the second is overpriced, when in reality the two quotes were based on completely different fabric weights and construction that were never specified in the first place. A responsible sourcing partner will ask for your tech pack, or help you develop one from a reference sample, before returning a number you can actually plan a business around. See our sourcing and export process for how we handle this stage with new buyers.
Realistic ranges — treated as a starting point, not a promise
With all of the caveats above firmly in place, buyers researching this topic generally find that a basic cotton tee in mid-volume quantities can land in a low-single-digit-dollar factory price range, a structured hoodie or sweatshirt considerably higher, and outerwear or garments with multiple trims and linings higher still. These ranges shift with fabric choice, decoration, order size, and current input costs, and should never be treated as a fixed quote for your specific product — the only way to get a number you can rely on is to submit your tech pack, reference sample, or detailed specification and let a supplier price your actual garment. If you're comparing this against other categories Tiwari Groups International sources, our garment manufacturing overview covers the product range and how quoting works across styles.
Other line items that quietly affect the final number
Beyond the core cost sheet, a few line items surprise first-time buyers because they aren't always volunteered upfront. Sampling costs — for the first fit sample, and often a second round after adjustments — are usually charged separately from bulk production, sometimes credited back against a confirmed bulk order and sometimes not; ask which applies before you commit to sampling. Fabric wastage during cutting is a real cost that experienced factories account for in their fabric consumption calculation, and a factory quoting unusually low fabric consumption for a given style is worth double-checking rather than assuming they've simply found an efficiency. Testing costs, where relevant — colorfastness, shrinkage, or compliance testing for a specific destination market — are typically billed separately and should be budgeted for rather than discovered after the fact. And freight, duties, and any destination-market compliance costs sit entirely outside the factory price, meaning the number on a cost sheet is never your full landed cost.
Why the same garment can price differently between factories
It's common for a buyer to get two quotes for what looks like the same garment and see a meaningful gap between them. Sometimes this reflects a genuine quality or capability difference — a more experienced factory with tighter tolerances, better machinery, or a track record with export buyers may price higher and be worth the premium. Other times it reflects a difference in what's actually included: one factory may be quoting a lighter fabric weight, cheaper trims, or a shortcut in construction that isn't obvious from a written quote alone. This is exactly why comparing quotes on price alone, without a shared tech pack that both factories are pricing against, tends to produce misleading conclusions. A sourcing partner's job in this situation is partly translation — making sure every factory in a comparison is quoting against the identical specification, so the price difference reflects a real difference in the offer rather than an apples-to-oranges comparison.
What we recommend before you request pricing
Pull together whatever you have — a tech pack if you've built one, or at minimum a clear photo reference, fabric preference, target GSM, trim list, and decoration details. Decide on a realistic first-order quantity per style and colorway, since this materially affects the price you'll be quoted. And be wary of any quote that arrives without a single clarifying question, because accurate garment pricing genuinely depends on details that a vague brief can't provide. If you're new to this process and don't yet have a tech pack, say so upfront — a good sourcing partner can help you build one from a reference garment rather than expecting you to arrive with technical documentation already in hand, and getting this step right early tends to save far more time than it costs.