My business is worth more than an hourly wage + materials
I am often told “that’s so expensive!” or “that only cost you $10 to make!” I think this is due to a lack of information on what it actually takes to manufacture clothing and sell it. Running a fashion business requires much more than the funds to pay the designer a wage and cover the cost of direct materials for the garment sewn.
Some of the invisible costs of running a fashion business: studio rental and monthly bills, capital purchases like machinery and tables and computers, business and trademark registration fees, banking fees, creating catalogs and lookbooks, shipping of materials or transport to pick them up, building up and maintaining inventory in advance of sales, losing money on garments that didn’t sell or sold on sale, payment processing fees, designing new collections and creating new samples, legal fees, researching trends, art supplies, web design, website domain and hosting fees, SEO services and consulting, packaging materials, marketing materials like postcards and business cards, office supplies, workers’ comp and unemployment insurance and other taxes, sending free samples for review, hosting events like pop up shops or trunk shows, garment labels and hang tags, logo or artwork design, inventory storage, stock supplies like hangers and garment racks, phone and internet bills, software purchases like Photoshop or Quickbooks, training new interns or assistants, meetings with editors and stylists and photographers, hiring photographers / models / hair stylists / makeup artists / wardrobe stylists / assistants for photo shoots, photo shoot venue rentals, producing fashion shows or presentation shows, the cost of creating and mailing catalogs and marketing materials to boutiques and retailers, business classes… The list goes on.
These invisible expenses add up to tens of thousands of dollars a year, even for a small business owner who is prudent and does most operations like sewing, marketing, and selling for herself or himself. For small businesses who outsource sewing or who hire sales agents or who have a team of employees, these costs quickly add up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. This means that it requires an enormous amount of revenue (and lots of sales) for a business to even break even before the designer can consider paying themselves a salary at all.
Also bear in mind that many of these things also require time to complete, even if most of the labor (such as accounting) is outsourced to another professional. Someone still has to collect receipts, input data, write the social media posts, keep count of inventory, plan photoshoots, etc. An hourly wage that only covers sewing time, for example, would ignore the countless other hours that it takes for a designer to stay in business. For my business, Angela Friedman Inc, I do most everything myself in my studio. For every 1 hour that I spend sewing, I spent approximately another 5-6 hours doing all of these other things like social media, writing emails to customers and retailers, planning events, designing new styles, and paperwork paperwork paperwork. If I counted say $15 an hour for my sewing time in each price, but didn’t increase the prices to reflect these other expenses, I would in effect be earning $3-$4 an hour. In the US, at least, $15 is barely a living wage. $3 means that either you burn out or your business goes bankrupt.
Consider the example of one of my silk and French lace robes, the Iris Robe priced at $325. If you think that is expensive, sure, maybe it is. But I’m not putting $325 in my pocket. After the cost of materials directly associated with the garment and packaging and payment fees, I’m left with about $253. It takes me about 3 hours to cut and sew one start to finish (there are a lot of details like lace applique that take longer than a standard robe might). Remember how I mentioned that I spend 6 hours doing “other business stuff” for every 1 hour I spend sewing? Take that into account, and now this robe takes me 21 hours to make. Divide the $253 left, and I’m now earning $12 an hour to sew the robe. (In reality, I earn less than this due to other unexpected expenses that I simply can’t count on.) But I think we can all at least agree that an artist earning $12 an hour is not “too expensive.”
Of course I realize that there are many who can’t afford a $325 robe anyway. I’m in no way implying that you don’t exist or your needs aren’t important. If you can’t afford clothes that are ethically manufactured, it’s also because our economic system is broken. If you can only afford clothes manufactured in sweatshops by oppressed peoples of the world, then you too are oppressed. Your wages are probably also unfairly low and your expenses are probably also unfairly high. And of course, our trade quotas being screwed up in the 90s didn’t help, but that’s another discussion for another day. (For the record, I also can’t afford to buy my own work, which is another indicator that our economic system is broken.)
My point is, please be kind before accusing small businesses of price gouging. We’re trying to earn a living the same way as you, and most of us are just barely scraping by regardless of how high our prices may seem at first glance. There are so many unseen expenses that go into running a fashion business. My business is worth more than an hourly wage + materials.
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