Your first time developing a product, you might be surprised by how expensive samples are. Depending on your design and its complexity, you could easily spend a few hundred dollars per sample. Sample costs are closer to retail pricing (if not more) than to your per unit production cost for several reasons.
With a single sample, you don’t get any of the efficiency of bulk production. This is true whether your factory is making the sample or you are working with a separate samplemaker. You aren’t stacking and cutting multiple garments at once so cutting takes significantly more time per garment. There is more handling as the one garment (and often one samplemaker) has to travel between machines for each step. Samples aren’t made on a production sewing line set to sew one operation very efficiently, they are made in a sample room set up to sew a garment from start to finish.
Here’s what it took for me to sew a single dress sample a few weeks ago:
- Lay out and hand cut 2 different fabrics plus interfacing
- Iron fusible interfacing onto pieces
- Thread 3 different types of machines
- Swap out thread on the single needle machine multiple times
- Thread for the main color
- Thread to hem the contrast fabric
- Thread to topstitch the size label to the brand label
- Swap out the foot on the single needle machine multiple times
- Cording/zipper foot for topstitching next to a zipper
- Invisible zipper foot
- Standard foot
- Sew garment, switching between machines as needed
- Hand sew on buttons and hook and eye
- Iron the finished garment
This was all for just one sample. You can see how sampling can be time-intensive.
Samples are also a test of the pattern and fabric. The first time making anything takes longer as you’re seeing how the fabric handles for the first time and how the garment is constructed. There isn’t a previous sew-by sample to reference either.
Expect to pay 2-3X or more the production cost for samples. Samples are a test of the design, pattern, fit, fabric, and construction and are worth the investment to create a garment that fits.