Buying yarn
Weavers, knitters, and brands who buy yarn to place with a nominated mill.
What you are buying, and what sets its price
You are buying a count, a spinning system, a blend and a delivery term. All four are price. A 30s combed compact and a 30s carded rotor are both "30s" and are not the same product or the same money.
A yarn price is fibre cost plus conversion cost plus margin, then freight. The fibre part you can see on this site. The conversion part is power, labour, waste, machine speed and how full the mill is, and it is the part that is genuinely private.
That split is the most useful thing to hold in your head. When cotton moves and yarn does not, the mill is absorbing it and there is a conversation to be had. When cotton is flat and yarn moves, the conversation is about something else: power tariffs, wages, or a mill that has run out of order book.
Use the conversion check on the learning page. A yarn price minus the cost of the fibre in it, allowing 8 to 15 per cent spinning waste depending on carded or combed, leaves the conversion charge plus margin. Comparing that spread across four quotations tells you more than comparing four headline prices.
One warning about that 8 to 15 band, and about every other range on this page. They are generic. They are the shape of the thing, offered so a quotation with 4 per cent waste in it or 30 per cent looks wrong to you immediately. They are not a figure to hold a mill to. Waste, comber noil, the fibre grade and the conversion charge all belong to one count, and none of them travel to another. A conversion cost quoted to you for 20s tells you nothing about 40s except that 40s will cost more.
What actually sets a yarn price
Why one number arrives from a mill and eight decisions are hidden inside it, and why no published index contains any of them.
Read it instead
A mill sends you one number for a kilogram of yarn. That number is eight separate decisions.
You control several of them. Which means several of them are negotiable, if you know they are there.
A finer count makes fewer kilograms an hour on the same spindle, for the same hour of power and labour.
Three products, not three grades of one. Combing throws away short fibre as noil, and you pay for what is left.
Ring, rotor, air jet and vortex are different machines with different economics, not quality steps.
A finer count needs a longer, stronger cotton. That is a dearer fibre, not the same fibre spun thinner.
You do not buy one kilogram of fibre to make one kilogram of yarn. Ask what conversion the quote assumes.
More turns per inch is more time on the frame. A high twist voile yarn costs more than a soft twist knitting yarn.
A polyester cotton yarn is not the average of two fibre prices. The two settle at different moisture allowances.
Cone weight, dyed against greige, shades per lot, and the delivery term. None of them is the count.
None of these eight appears in any published price index, anywhere in the world. That is why an index is not the tool for this job.
The buyer guide walks all eight, tells you what a calm reading looks like, and gives you a costing sheet to build the price yourself.
Buying yarn and fabric, step by step
One process buys both: the thirteen steps a cone of yarn and a roll of cloth share, from the spec to the record that carries into next season.
Read it instead
Buying yarn and buying fabric run on the same thirteen steps. Here they are, in the order they actually happen.
A thirty count combed compact and a thirty count carded rotor are both called thirties, and they are not the same product or the same money. That is why the spec leads.
Step one. Write the spec. For yarn, the count, the spinning system, the blend and the twist. For cloth, the construction, weight, width, finish, and the tests it must pass.
Two. Decide where to buy from: the duty into your country, the payment terms you can carry, and which country is actually deep in what you need.
Three. Read the market: the cotton under the yarn, the yarn inside the cloth, the supplier’s currency, and the freight on your lane.
Four. Ask three to five mills, and send every one the same spec, quantity and term, so the quotes compare.
Five. Get quotes, samples and test reports, and judge them against the spec, not against each other. Three quotes for three slightly different things is the oldest trick in the trade.
Six. Put the quotes on one basis, landed with freight, duty and the cost of the payment term. For cloth, take out the yarn content first. It is calculable to the gram.
Seven. Negotiate: price, validity, tolerance, the delivery schedule, the minimum per colour, and how claims will be handled.
Eight. Place the purchase order with every spec line on it, and for cloth, the sealed sample attached. That sample is the referee every later argument goes to.
Nine. Inspection before it ships: cones drawn before loading, or cloth scored on the four point system. The inspector is paid by you and reports to you.
Ten. Collect the documents, with the proof of origin if a duty preference depends on it.
Eleven. Clear customs. The rates into Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and China are on the duty page, dated, beside the schemes that can take them to zero.
Twelve. Check the delivery against the contract, and run a trial before committing the lot. Faults found in the trial are a claim. Faults found in bulk are your cost.
Thirteen. Pay the balance and record the mill’s performance: what it tested, how it ran, whether the dates held. That record is your leverage next season.
Both processes, step by step with the tools beside them, are on the guide. Free, and there is nothing to sign up to.
Before the steps
The 13 steps, in order
Each step is a short page of its own: the detail, the tools for that step and the next step one tap away at the foot.
- Step 1 of 13 Write the yarn spec Count as singles and resultant, spinning system, fibre and blend, twist, quality level, certification, and the monthly quantity.
- Step 2 of 13 Choose origins and terms The duty into your country, the payment terms you can carry, and the lead time your programme can live with.
- Step 3 of 13 Read the market Cotton this month, the supplier’s currency, and what yarn is actually leaving each origin at.
- Step 4 of 13 Send the request to three to five mills Spec, programme or one-off, packing, payment, whether you need a sample, and your target.
- Step 5 of 13 Get quotes, a sample and a test report; run a trial The test report comes from the mill’s laboratory; the trial runs on your own machines.
- Step 6 of 13 Put the quotes on one basis Work the spread per count, then land each quote with freight, duty and the cost of the payment term.
- Step 7 of 13 Negotiate Price, validity, tolerance, the delivery schedule, and how claims will be handled.
- Step 8 of 13 Purchase order with every spec line on it Then the letter of credit or the transfer, against the pro forma.
- Step 9 of 13 Pre-shipment inspection, if you want one An inspector draws cones before loading. Usual on a first order, often dropped once trust is built.
- Step 10 of 13 Collect the documents With the proof of origin, if a duty preference depends on it.
- Step 11 of 13 Clear customs Cotton yarn is heading 5205 or 5206; the rates into Bangladesh, Pakistan and China are on the duty page.
- Step 12 of 13 Check the delivery against the contract Conditioned weight, count, strength and evenness, then a trial; claim or accept.
- Step 13 of 13 Pay the balance; record the mill’s performance What it tested, how it ran, and whether the mill kept its dates. That record is your leverage next quarter.
What we cannot tell you
- We do not publish mill quotations. Our own yarn reference sheet lists the specifications we collect and is not yet publishing prices; it says so on its face.
- We do not know the conversion cost of your mill, and neither does anyone outside it. Everything on this site bears on the fibre half of the price.
- The producer price indexes are American. They show direction well and they are not a level you can quote to an Asian mill.
- We publish no lead time figure, and nobody publishes one free. It moves with the mill, the count, the season and how full the order book is. Ask for it in writing at the same time as the price, because a rate you cannot get delivered is not a rate.
- We do not know your quality standard, your delivery window, or what you have already covered, and all three change what the same number should mean to you.
Tools you can use
13 things you can open, type into or take away for this purchase. 6 of them are spreadsheets you keep.
Calculators
Spreadsheets with live formulas. Type your own numbers into the yellow cells and the rest computes. They arrive empty of our figures on purpose, because your conversion cost is not ours.
- Yarn costing template Excel
Build a kilogram of yarn line by line from the fibre up, including the cleaning and combing waste most buyers leave out of the sum.
- Yarn count converter Excel
Type a count and its system into two cells and read the same yarn in every other system, so two quotes in Ne and tex can be compared.
- Freight reckoner Excel
Turn the box rate you were actually quoted into the cents per kilogram that belongs in your costing, at the load you will really achieve.
- Cost of payment terms
Put the deposit, the days and your own borrowing rate in and read what the term costs you in interest, so two quotes on two different terms compare on one line.
Tables to look yourself up in
Tables built to be read across. Find the row that is yours and read the answer, rather than reading a general explanation and doing the translation yourself.
- Count conversion matrix
Read across from the system your mill quoted in to the system you work in, with the rule shown rather than just the answer.
- Import duty on fibre and yarn
Find your tariff line and read the base rate for each market, with the code it was read at. Britain and the Union have diverged on yarn.
- Seven supplier countries, side by side
Compare Pakistan, India, China, Bangladesh and the rest on wages, power reliability, currency, cost of money and the tariff they face, each figure stamped with its own year.
- Box rate to cents per kilo
Read your quoted box rate down the side and your realistic load across the top, and take the freight cost per kilo off the grid.
Spreadsheets to download
The underlying numbers as spreadsheets, each one carrying its own explanation sheet and its source. Yours to keep, rework and attach to an internal mail.
- Producer price indexes Excel
Months of American fibre and yarn producer price history, which is what you use to test a mill that says the market moved.
- Month of year pattern Excel
See whether the month you usually buy in has historically been dear or cheap, computed over ten complete years.
- Country cost indicators Excel
Take the whole origin comparison away as a sheet, with a reference year in its own column against every figure.
Ask a person
When the answer is not published anywhere, which for a real quotation it never is. Every one of these is free to send and gets a reference number back.
- Ask for a quote
Send one specification and get quotes you can compare side by side. No fee, and a person reads every one.
- Register as a buyer
Tell us your counts and volumes once, and be told when something matches, instead of asking every time.
Every spreadsheet here has live formulas and arrives with our own figures left out, because your conversion cost is not ours and a sheet full of somebody else's numbers is worse than an empty one. What is worth having is the shape: which lines exist, in what order, and what each one does to the total. All of them are on the downloads board as well, shelved by what you buy.
Start with this one
If you only open one thing in this guide, open the costing template for a cone of yarn. It turns the steps above into a number you can put next to a quotation.
Take it with you a costing template for a cone of yarn: a calculator with live formulas , with its sources, its licence and a sheet explaining every column inside the file.
