Reading course

If you buy finished garments

18 numbered stops across 5 stages. Everything on this site that is yours, in order. The shape is the same as the raw materials path, but almost every stop is different, because a brand buyer is asking where the orders are going rather than what the fibre is doing.

How long About fifty minutes end to end. Stage 3 is the part you will come back to each month, when the trade statistics update.

1. Stage 1. Learn the words

   A garment quotation hides most of its cost in terms of trade and in the fabric underneath. These three sections are where those become readable.

   1. 1 Garment trade terms Reference FOB, CMT, CM, LDP and DDP, with what each includes and who carries the risk. Two quotations on different terms are not comparable until this is settled.
   2. 2 Reading trade statistics Reference What a unit value is and what it hides. Read before anything on the garments page, because every figure there is a unit value.
   3. 3 Reading a fabric specification Reference The single largest line in most garment costs is the cloth. This is enough to ask the right question about it.

2. Stage 2. Read the guide

   What the numbers can and cannot tell you, before you start reading them.

   1. 4 Buying garments Guide What a unit value can and cannot support, and how to read where orders are actually going rather than where a headline says they are.
   2. 5 Buying fabric Guide One level up your own supply chain. Enough to know whether a factory’s claim about fabric cost is plausible.

3. Stage 3. Read the numbers, in this order

   The monthly loop. Product first, then demand, then what the box and the country add.

   1. 6 1. What is being made, and where The numbers Garment categories by trade code, with value and weight. Total apparel figures hide the only thing that matters to you: your product may be moving the other way.
   2. 7 2. Your own product line The numbers Forty product lines opened out, each with the twelve largest supplying countries and the price per piece. This is the page to bookmark.
   3. 8 3. Are European and US retailers ordering? The numbers European and UK imports, plus what European retailers say they will order. Intent months ahead of the shipment, then the shipment itself.
   4. 9 4. Shipping and country costs The numbers Container rates as cents per kilo, and wages, power and tariffs by origin. Apparel fills a box long before it reaches the weight limit, which is why this is misread so often.
   5. 10 5. The fibre underneath, briefly The numbers Short on purpose. Enough of the raw material picture to know whether a factory’s "cotton went up" is true this month.

4. Stage 4. Do the arithmetic on your own numbers

   What turns a market reading into a costed decision.

   1. 11 Fabric weight calculator Calculator The fabric is usually the biggest line in a garment cost. This gives you the consumption per garment to argue about it.
   2. 12 Freight reckoner Calculator Your own quoted box rate and your own load weight, in dollars per garment at 250 grams. The number to put straight into a cost sheet.
   3. 13 European and UK trade files Calculator The EU27 and UK import tables as Excel workbooks with the licence inside the file. The US product tables are shown but not downloadable, and the reason is on that page.

5. Stage 5. Go to the primary sources yourself

   Where the garment numbers come from. All free, all official, and all checkable without us.

   1. 14 OTEXA (opens in a new tab) Outside site The US government’s own textile and apparel import tables. The cleanest free way to check a US figure yourself.
   2. 15 Eurostat Comext (opens in a new tab) Outside site European trade at full detail. Our EU27 table is this database, filtered to apparel and put into euro per kilogram.
   3. 16 HMRC uktradeinfo (opens in a new tab) Outside site UK trade counted separately since it left the single market. Under the Open Government Licence, so you may reuse it as freely as we do.
   4. 17 Eurostat business and consumer surveys (opens in a new tab) Outside site What European retailers say about orders, months before those orders become shipments.
   5. 18 EU preference status (opens in a new tab) Outside site Whether your origin still enjoys duty free access, which can be worth more than every price negotiation of the year put together.

That is the whole path. Nothing on it is a forecast and nothing is a quotation: it is published figures, the date each was read, and our own arithmetic where it is labelled as ours. If a step is unclear or a link is dead, tell us and we will fix it rather than leave you to work around it.