Why the Sample Costs More Than the Garment | Botonglee

The first quote surprises almost everyone.

You have a design. You want to make a few hundred pieces. You ask what a sample costs, and the number that comes back is far higher than what a finished garment will eventually sell for. It looks like a mistake, or like being overcharged.

It is neither. The sample fee is not the price of one garment. It is the price of the blueprint. Once you understand what you are actually buying, the rest of the schedule — including the part that quietly costs most first-time brands two weeks — becomes much easier to plan.

A production work order sheet with the finished sample

What you are paying for

Sampling carries one-time development costs. There are four of them.

Pattern development. This is the engineering drawing of the garment. A design on paper is not yet a garment. The curve where the shoulder becomes the sleeve, the line where front and back panels meet, the width of the overlap at a closure — all of it has to become numbers before anything can be cut. Without this drawing, the same garment cannot be made twice.

Grading. This is the drawing repeated at every size. Making a small does not give you a medium for free. How much the shoulder grows, how much the chest grows, how much length is added — each measurement is decided separately. Scaling the whole thing up by a percentage produces garments that fit nobody.

Sample sewing. The labour of physically making one piece. A single garment sewn outside a production line costs differently from a garment sewn inside one.

Die and tooling costs for trims and hardware.

Here is the part that matters: three of those four do not recur in bulk production. The pattern exists. The grading exists. The dies exist. That is why the sample looks expensive and why it is expensive only once.

Which is why a second sample costs less

You may not like the first sample. That happens often, and it is precisely what samples are for.

From there the path splits. If the changes are clear and unambiguous, they can be confirmed and applied directly to bulk production. If you need to hold the revised garment in your hands before committing, a second sample is made.

The second sample costs less than the first, because the pattern already exists. The development portion of the four costs above is simply not charged again.

The two weeks nobody budgets for

This is where first-time production most often slips.

A garment is not finished when the fabric is sewn. It becomes a product when the woven label and hang tag are attached — and those are made on a completely separate track from the clothing itself.

Labels take one to two weeks to produce. Minimum order is 1,000 pieces, at roughly 100–350 KRW each.

Hang tags have a minimum of 500 pieces, at roughly 150–300 KRW each.

The trap is ordering them in the wrong sequence. If you wait until bulk production finishes and then order labels, your garments sit finished in a box for two weeks waiting for a small woven strip. If you have a launch date, those two weeks come straight out of your runway.

So labels and hang tags should be ordered at the same time you commission the sample. They are produced in parallel while the sample is being made, and they are ready to meet the garments the moment bulk production ends.

This single piece of sequencing prevents the most common delay in a first production run.

A production work order sheet with the finished sample — children's bottoms

Fabric is chosen by hand, not by screen

Fabric on a monitor and fabric in your hand are different materials. Weight, opacity, and how much it gives when pulled are all difficult to judge from a photograph.

After the sample is paid for, swatches are sent to you — actual pieces of the candidate fabrics. You handle them, choose, and production proceeds with the fabric you picked.

For clients outside Seoul this is handled by courier. For clients outside Korea, by air or sea freight, depending on the shipment.

What happens if something is defective

The standard for what counts as a defect is set out in the production terms before manufacturing begins. Agreeing on that line in advance is better for both sides than arguing about it afterward.

Goods are inspected before delivery. If a defect does get through, request service within 14 days. Repairable items are repaired; items that cannot be repaired are refunded.

You do not need to know the vocabulary

Plenty of people arrive without knowing fabric names or what a "fit" means technically. That is normal, and it is not an obstacle.

Fabric, fit, and construction get decided together. What you need to bring is the feeling of the garment you want and a budget. Everything else can be narrowed down through conversation.

For overseas brands: production runs the same way. Communication happens before the sample, swatches ship to you, and finished goods move by air or sea. If you would rather meet in person, send an enquiry first — that way the meeting starts from something concrete instead of from scratch.

In short

The sample fee buys a blueprint, not a garment. Pattern, grading, and tooling are charged once.

A second sample costs less than the first, because the pattern already exists.

Labels take one to two weeks. Order them alongside the sample, not after bulk production, or you lose that time at the end.

Fabric is chosen from physical swatches, sent after the sample is paid for.

Defects are handled by service request within 14 days.

If you have a garment in mind, tell me what it is and roughly how many pieces you need. I will come back with what is possible and an approximate schedule before anything is committed.

[Request a production quote](/promotion/quote) · Further questions are answered in the [FAQ](/promotion/faq), and past work is documented in the [production archive](/blog?category=%ED%94%84%EB%A1%9C%EB%AA%A8%EC%85%98%EC%8A%A4%ED%86%A0%EB%A6%AC).