Why nobody can quote you a hoodie price
Ask five manufacturers what a custom hoodie costs and you will get five different answers, all of them useless, because "a hoodie" is not a specification. A 250 GSM pullover in a stock colour with a single-position screen print and a 400 GSM zip hoodie in a custom Pantone with chenille patches and woven labels are the same word and a completely different garment.
What follows is the honest version: every lever that moves the number, and roughly how much each one moves it relative to the others. We do not publish prices, for anyone, because a published price is either wrong for your specification or a bait number. What we can do is show you where the money actually goes, so you can read a quote — ours or anyone else's — and know what you are looking at.
The cost drivers, in order of impact
1. Quantity
The largest single factor, and the least intuitive.
Nearly every fixed cost in garment manufacturing — pattern development, marker making, machine set-up, screen preparation, embroidery digitising — is paid once regardless of whether you make 50 pieces or 500. At 50, each garment carries a fiftieth of that. At 500, a five-hundredth.
This is why per-unit prices fall so steeply between 50 and 200 pieces and then flatten. It is also why the first run is always the most expensive per garment you will ever make, and why that is not a sign anyone is overcharging you. How MOQ works covers this in detail.
2. Fabric — weight, composition and how it is sourced
The biggest material cost, and it scales almost linearly with GSM. A 500 GSM hoodie uses roughly twice the fabric weight of a 250 GSM one, and you pay for weight twice: once at the mill, and again in freight.
Composition matters as much. Cotton-rich fleece costs more than a polyester blend. Organic or certified cotton costs more again.
Then the sourcing question, which is where a lot of budgets go wrong:
- Stock fabric — the mill already has it, in colours it already runs. Cheapest, fastest, and your colour options are whatever exists.
- Custom dyeing — the fabric is dyed to your Pantone. More expensive per metre, adds lead time, and carries its own minimum from the mill, which is often higher than your garment MOQ. This is the single most common reason a brand's minimum quantity turns out to be higher than they expected.
Our hoodie GSM guide covers what each weight is actually for.
3. Development — pattern and sampling
A one-off cost, paid before any bulk garment exists.
Pattern development is the drafting of the shapes your garment is cut from, made to your fit intentions rather than adapted from a stock block. Sampling is the physical garment made from that pattern so you can check it in your hands. Complex garments need more than one round.
Where a sample sits commercially varies by manufacturer. At NO FUGAZI it is not charged as a separate line when you commit to a bulk run with a deposit — the deposit is credited towards the bulk total rather than added on top.
4. Construction
Every construction decision is minutes on a machine, and minutes are labour.
- Zip against pullover — a zip hoodie is meaningfully more expensive. It is more pieces, more operations, a hardware component, and a zip that has to be set straight.
- Hood construction — a double-layer hood is roughly twice the hood work of a single layer, plus the extra fabric.
- Ribbing — cuffs, hem and pocket trims. Specified separately from the body fabric and priced separately.
- Pockets — a kangaroo pocket is one operation; a split pocket with a zip is several.
- Seam finishing — coverstitching and flatlocking take longer than an overlock and look better.
5. Trims and labels
Individually small, collectively not. Woven neck labels, care labels, hang tags, drawcords, metal or moulded cord tips, eyelets, zip pulls.
Custom trims carry their own minimums, and those minimums are frequently higher than a 50-piece garment run. Ordering 1,000 woven labels for a 50-piece run is normal — the labels are cheap, the set-up is not, and you keep the rest for next time.
6. Decoration
Priced by method, by number of positions and by colour count.
- Screen printing — cheapest at volume, most expensive at low quantity, because each colour needs its own screen and each screen is a set-up cost. A one-colour print is far cheaper than a six-colour one.
- DTF — no screens, so the set-up cost largely disappears. Better for complex, full-colour artwork and for small runs.
- Embroidery — priced by stitch count. A small chest logo is inexpensive; a large dense back piece is not. Digitising the artwork is a one-off cost.
- Chenille — the varsity-patch look. Applied as a separate component, so it costs more than a print of the same size.
- Puff print — a raised screen print. Slightly more than flat screen printing.
- Silicone and rubber badges — moulded separately and attached, with their own tooling cost.
Two positions cost roughly twice one position. This is the easiest place to control a budget on a first run.
7. Packing
Polybags, tissue, boxes, care cards, folding to a specification. Modest per unit and it adds up. Branded packaging carries its own minimums, same as trims.
8. Freight
Charged by weight and volume, which brings GSM back for a second bite. Air freight is fast and expensive; sea freight is slow and cheap. A heavyweight order shipped by air can carry a freight cost that surprises people more than the garment cost did.
Duty and import VAT are separate again and depend on where the goods are landing.
Two example configurations
Not prices — shapes. These are the two ends of the same garment.
The lean first run. 50 pullover hoodies, 300 GSM stock-colour fleece, standard rib, kangaroo pocket, one-colour screen print in one position, standard woven neck label, polybagged, sea freight. Every lever set to its cheapest sensible position.
The considered product. 150 zip hoodies, 400 GSM custom-dyed to a Pantone, double-layer hood, split zip pockets, heavy custom rib, chenille chest patch plus embroidered sleeve, custom woven labels and hang tags, branded packaging, air freight for a launch date.
The second is several times the first per garment. Both are reasonable. Which one you should be making depends on what you are launching and what you can sell.
Where new brands overspend
Consistently, in the same three places.
Custom dyeing on a first run. It carries mill minimums and lead time, and on 50 pieces the cost per garment is punishing. Stock colours on run one, custom colour on run two, once you know it sells.
Too many decoration positions. Four print positions on a first drop is a budget decision disguised as a design decision.
Too many colourways. Three colourways of 50 is three separate runs of 50, not one run of 150 — and it is priced accordingly.
How to get a number that means something
Bring the specification, not the question. Garment type, quantity, fabric weight, colour, decoration method and positions, and any trims you care about. If you do not have all of it, bring what you have — a reference photo and a rough quantity is enough to start, and the technical side gets drafted from there.
What a factory actually needs to quote sets out the minimum, and cut and sew manufacturing explains what happens after you approve one. If you would rather just ask, send us the idea and we will tell you what it would take.
