You have a design, a rough quantity in mind, and one question you cannot get a straight answer to: what will this actually cost to make?
Ask three factories and you get three numbers, none of them explained. One quotes $3.10. One quotes $4.80. One asks for your tech pack before saying anything at all. The gap is not because someone is cheating you. A garment price is built from five or six moving parts, and most quotes hand you the total without the arithmetic.
This guide takes the total apart: what sits inside an FOB price, what a factory means by CM, what typical products cost per piece, and which expenses show up after the invoice. By the end you will be able to read a quote line by line, spot the number that is out of place, and build a landed cost you can price a product against.
Why Bangladesh
Bangladesh is the world's second-largest apparel exporter, shipping $39.35 billion in ready-made garments in FY25 — roughly 80–85% of national export earnings. Scale is the point: mills, trim suppliers, washing plants and finishing units all sit within a few hours of each other, so a factory rarely imports a component and waits. It also means competition, and a country with thousands of export-ready factories does not sustain inflated prices for long.
What goes into a garment price
Every quote you receive is one of three things, and knowing which one you are looking at is the first step.
- CM (Cut & Make) — the factory's labour and overhead only. You supply fabric and trims. Sometimes written CMT, adding Trim.
- FOB (Free On Board) — the factory buys everything, makes the garment, and delivers it loaded onto the vessel at port. The standard for apparel sourcing.
- CIF or DDP — FOB plus freight and insurance, and in the case of DDP, duty and delivery to your door.
Most first-time buyers should be quoting FOB. It puts material sourcing on the party who does it every day, and it gives you one number to compare across suppliers.
The FOB build-up
Here is roughly how a $4.00 FOB knit garment divides. Percentages shift by product — a jacket carries more trim, a plain tee almost none — but the shape holds.
| Cost component | Share of FOB | What it covers | Who controls it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fabric | 50–65% | Yarn, knitting or weaving, dyeing, finishing | Your fabric choice and GSM |
| Trims & accessories | 5–12% | Labels, zips, buttons, thread, elastic, polybags | Your spec and branding |
| CM (cut & make) | 15–25% | Cutting, sewing, finishing, factory overhead | Design complexity |
| Wash / print / embroidery | 0–15% | Garment wash, screen print, embroidery | Optional, adds up fast |
| Factory margin & compliance | 8–12% | Profit, audits, certifications, testing | Factory tier |
The lesson buyers keep relearning: fabric is the price. If a quote comes back higher than expected, the answer is almost never in the sewing rate. It is in the yarn count, the GSM, or the fact that you asked for a custom dye colour.
What cut & make actually costs
Indicative CM rates in Bangladesh for a mid-tier compliant factory run roughly $0.85–$1.60 for a basic jersey t-shirt, $1.50–$2.80 for a polo, $2.50–$4.50 for a fleece hoodie, $3.00–$6.00 for five-pocket denim, and $6.00–$12.00 for padded outerwear.
The spread within each product is about operations, not exploitation. A tee with a set-in sleeve, side seams, a neck tape and a hem takes fewer machine minutes than one with coverstitch detailing and a custom collar rib.
Bangladesh's statutory minimum wage for entry-level RMG workers is BDT 12,500 per month (about $113), set in December 2023 — a 56% rise from the previous BDT 8,000. Unions continue to argue for substantially more, and the figure remains under active negotiation. It matters to you as a buyer: quotes well below the market band mean a corner is being cut somewhere, and rarely one you want your brand attached to.
Typical FOB prices by product
These ranges assume moderate volumes (roughly 1,000–5,000 pieces per style), mid-weight standard fabrics and no heavy embellishment. Treat them as a sanity check, not a quotation.
| Product | Typical FOB (USD) | Common MOQ | Biggest cost driver |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic cotton t-shirt (180 GSM) | $2.40 – $4.20 | 500–1,000 / colour | Fabric GSM and yarn quality |
| Piqué polo shirt | $4.50 – $8.00 | 500 / colour | Collar and cuff rib, fabric |
| Fleece hoodie (320 GSM) | $7.50 – $13.00 | 500 / colour | Fabric weight, drawcord and metal trims |
| Denim jeans (non-stretch) | $8.00 – $16.00 | 800–1,000 / style | Denim quality and wash recipe |
| Woven shirt (poplin) | $5.50 – $10.00 | 500 / colour | Fabric count, interlining, buttons |
Two adjustments matter. Below your factory's comfortable MOQ, expect 15–30% higher unit prices — the setup cost is the same whether you make 300 pieces or 3,000. Above roughly 10,000 pieces per style, expect to negotiate downward, because fabric can be booked in fuller batches.
The costs that are not in the quote
FOB gets goods onto a ship. It does not get them into your warehouse or onto a shelf. Budget for these separately or your margin calculation will be wrong from day one.
- Sampling — $30 to $150 per style across two or three rounds. Often non-refundable, sometimes credited against bulk.
- Fabric development — a colour that does not yet exist means lab dips and a possible minimum dye lot charge.
- Freight — sea is the economical choice; air can cost 8–12 times more per kilo and is a rescue tool, not a plan.
- Duty and tariffs — depends entirely on your destination market and any preferential trade arrangement.
- Third-party inspection — $250 to $400 per man-day. Worth every dollar on a first order.
- Lab testing — colourfastness, shrinkage, fibre composition. Often required by retailers, and required by law for children's wear in most markets.
A workable rule for a first order: assume landed cost is 25–40% above FOB by the time goods reach your warehouse. Confirm the real figure once you have a freight quote and your duty rate.
Why the cheapest quote is usually the expensive one
Price is a signal about what a factory is set up to do. A quote that undercuts the market by 30% typically means one of three things: the factory is subcontracting to a unit you have not audited, it is substituting a lighter fabric than your spec, or it is quoting a volume it expects you to exceed.
There is a real quality tier here, and it is visible in things you can verify. Bangladesh now hosts 284 LEED-certified garment factories, 121 of them Platinum-rated — the largest concentration of top-tier certified apparel plants in the world. Those facilities cost more to run and their prices reflect it. For many brands the premium is small and the risk reduction is large.
“Quote three factories against the same tech pack, and require each quote broken into fabric, trims, CM and wash. A supplier who will not itemise is telling you something.”
Frequently asked questions
- How much does it cost to manufacture a t-shirt in Bangladesh?
- Expect roughly $2.40–$4.20 FOB per piece for a standard 180 GSM cotton tee at moderate volumes. Heavier fabric, combed yarn, custom dye colours or prints push it higher.
- Is Bangladesh cheaper than China for clothing manufacturing?
- Generally yes on unit price, particularly for high-volume basics and knitwear. China often wins on complex construction, technical fabrics, very short runs and speed to market. Many brands split their range across both.
- What is a good MOQ to start with?
- Most compliant export factories work comfortably from around 500 pieces per style per colour. You can find lower, but expect a meaningful price premium below that line.
- What does FOB actually include?
- Materials, manufacturing, packing, export clearance, and delivery of goods loaded onto the vessel at the port of origin. It excludes ocean freight, insurance, import duty and inland delivery at your end.
- How much should I budget for samples?
- Plan for $200–$600 per style across development, fit and pre-production samples. It feels expensive for one garment; it is far cheaper than correcting a fit problem across 2,000 pieces.
- Why did my price go up after I approved the sample?
- Usually because the approved sample differs from the costed spec — a heavier fabric, an added label, a changed trim. Ask for a revised cost sheet showing exactly which line moved.
- Do prices change through the year?
- Yes. Cotton prices fluctuate and capacity tightens ahead of peak Western retail seasons. Booking earlier in a season generally gets you better rates and better factory attention.
The cost of manufacturing clothes in Bangladesh is not one number — it is fabric, trims, cut-and-make, finishing and margin, stacked into an FOB price and then extended by freight, duty and inspection into a landed cost. Fabric dominates. MOQ moves your unit price more than negotiation does. And the cheapest quote on the table is usually the one hiding the most.
Send us your tech pack, or a sketch and a target price, and we will come back with an itemised costing you can actually interrogate.
Sources
- 1.BSS News — Bangladesh's RMG exports notch 8.84% growth in FY25
- 2.The Business Standard — Tk12,500 minimum wage finalised for RMG
- 3.New Age — Total number of LEED-certified RMG factories now 284
- 4.BGMEA — Export Performance
- 5.Cornell ILR Global Labor Institute — Minimum wage-setting in Bangladesh's apparel industry