ASBCI’s garment costing handbook now available as an ebook

The ASBCI’s guide to garment costing has been released as an ebook and is available to purchase on Amazon.

Bringing together the collective expertise of ASBCI members, ‘Garment Costing – everything you need to know about the cost of making clothes’, was first published in print in 2018 and remains the only book of its type to specifically address all the aspects of garment costing.

Republished for 2020, the ASBCI has taken advantage of Amazon’s Kindle format to offer this essential guide at a reduced cost and make it available worldwide.

The technical handbook provides a step-by-step expla­nation of the garment costing process, including detailed chapters on sourcing strategy, the added-value supply chain, garment materials, labour, overheads, logistics, and garment reprocessing.

In addition to an analysis of the different stages of production and how these impact the cost of a garment, the ebook edition has been updated with a comprehensive explanation of costing calculations, complete with examples, to make it as easy as possible for fashion professionals at all stages of the supply chain to understand how to arrive at a final cost and how to price lines to ensure they make a profit.

Also included is a detailed explanation of labour costs calculations, including examples of time and work measurements and sample spreadsheets, a useful glossary of costing and accounting terms, and some cautionary anecdotes that demonstrate how easily product lines can go from profit to loss.

ASBCI chairman, Alistair Knox, said: “We are delighted to make the Garment Costing handbook available in a low-cost ebook format. It is the only guide of its kind to comprehensively cover this complex aspect of fashion buying and manufacture, and we are very pleased to be able to make it available more widely in response to popular demand.”