What One Pattern Really Costs: Why Run Size Matters

Ask what a pattern costs and most units answer with what they paid the pattern master. That is the one-off cost. What matters for pricing is a different number: what each garment carries, and that depends far more on how many garments you make than on what the pattern cost to draw.

A pattern is paid for once and used many times

The pattern master's time is spent before the first garment is cut and is the same whether you make 20 pieces or 2,000. Spread it over the run and each garment carries a share:

Three parts go into the top line, and it is worth keeping them apart:

• Drafting — the hours to produce the pattern, at the pattern master's rate. Count the first draft and the corrections after the toile, not just the clean copy.
• Grading — the minutes per size multiplied by the number of sizes.
• Plotting, paper and card — the physical cost of the set.

A worked example

These figures are made up to show the sum. They are not a benchmark, not a rate anybody should charge or pay, and not a claim about any unit. They are the values the pattern cost calculator opens with, so you can check every line.

• 6 hours of drafting at ₹400 an hour
• 5 sizes to grade at 25 minutes a size
• ₹300 for plotting and paper
• A run of 200 garments

Drafting: 6 × ₹400 = ₹2,400. Grading: 5 × 25 = 125 minutes, a little over two hours, ₹833.33. Plotting: ₹300. The one-off cost is ₹3,533. Divided by 200 garments, each carries ₹17.67.

The run is the number that matters

The pattern cost does not change. Only the run does:

• 20 garments: ₹176.67 each.
• 50 garments: ₹70.67 each.
• 100 garments: ₹35.33 each.
• 200 garments: ₹17.67 each.
• 500 garments: ₹7.07 each.
• 1,000 garments: ₹3.53 each.

A pattern that makes 20 pieces carries exactly ten times what the same pattern carries over 200. To put that against something: on a garment whose direct cost is ₹640, the ₹17.67 is 2.8% of it and the ₹176.67 is 27.6%. On a long run the pattern is a rounding error. On a short one it is a quarter of the cost, and a price built without it is short by that much.

Three places the cost quietly grows

1. The correction after the toile

A second round of fitting is real drafting time. Two more hours at ₹400 is ₹800 more, taking the one-off cost from ₹3,533 to ₹4,333 and the per-garment figure on a run of 200 from ₹17.67 to ₹21.67. Nothing about the finished pattern looks different, and yet it cost ₹4 a garment more.

2. More sizes

Each extra size is another 25 minutes of grading in this example. Going from five sizes to eight adds 75 minutes, ₹500, and moves a run of 200 from ₹17.67 to ₹20.17. A larger size range is a choice with a cost, and is worth making deliberately.

3. Using somebody at no cost

If the pattern is drafted in-house, the rate is not zero. The person's time is still spent and still paid for in their salary; use their hourly cost. Leaving it out does not remove the cost, only the line on the sheet where it would have been visible.

Reusing a pattern is the real saving

The sum above spreads the cost evenly over the run, and that is a conservative assumption. If the same style comes back next season unchanged, the same ₹3,533 is spread over 400 garments instead of 200 and each carries ₹8.83. A pattern that is kept, labelled and graded cleanly is an asset that gets cheaper every time it is used. One that is lost, or drawn again from scratch because nobody can find it, pays its full cost again.

What these sums leave out

• Digitising a paper pattern. It is drafting time here, and so is fixing a pattern that came back wrong.
• Software licences. They are a monthly cost of the studio, not of one pattern, and belong in overhead.
• An even spread. The cost is divided equally over the run. It does not know that the first garments to leave the line carried the learning.
• Where it goes on the costing sheet. The garment costing calculator has no line called pattern cost. Decide where it goes, tell whoever prices, and keep to it — a cost that is on no line is a cost the price never recovers.

Put your own figures into the pattern cost calculator. If you want to see how that sits inside a price, the mark-up and margin article builds a garment's cost in layers, and the CAD roadmap sets out the order in which to learn drafting, grading and marker planning.