Why a hand-knit quote is not like a factory quote.
Hand-knit pricing is built from stitch count and artisan hours, not from machine time. What that means for your costing sheet and your margin.
A hand-knit quote is built from stitch count and artisan hours, not from machine time and setup cost. Because one artisan knits each garment from first stitch to last, the price scales with the labour in the piece, not with the size of the run, so there is no minimum order to amortise a machine setup over.
Why a hand-knitting quote works differently from other manufacturing quotes
A machine-knit quote is built around machine time and setup. The factory needs a minimum order to justify programming and setting up the machine, and the per-piece cost falls as the run grows. That is why sourcing directors blocked by machine minimums come to hand-knit in the first place.
A KOCO quote is built the other way. We count the stitches in the garment, the hours those stitches take a trained artisan, the yarn the piece consumes, and the pattern-writing and sampling work that precedes it. The per-piece cost is largely stable from one piece to 1000, because the labour in each garment does not change with the run size.
What does change with scale is throughput, not unit cost. A larger run takes more artisan hours in total and a longer lead time, but it does not unlock a machine-style discount, because there is no machine setup cost to recover.
How the two quotes are built.
| Factor | Machine-knit quote | KOCO hand-knit quote |
|---|---|---|
| Priced on | Machine time and setup | Stitch count and artisan hours |
| Minimum order | Set to recover machine setup | None. One piece upward |
| Per-piece cost at scale | Falls as the run grows | Largely stable across run sizes |
| What scales | Machine speed | Trained artisan numbers |
| Lead time driver | Machine scheduling | Artisan hours per garment |
Read the quote as labour, not as throughput.
If your costing sheet assumes a unit-cost curve that falls with volume, a hand-knit quote will look wrong. It is not wrong; it is built on a different input. The advantage you gain is the absence of a minimum order and the ability to produce a single runway piece on the same method as a run of 1000.
Bring us the tech pack. We will quote on stitch count, yarn, pattern writing and sampling, and show you where the number moves.
What sourcing directors ask us.
Not in the machine-knit sense. The per-piece cost is largely stable because the labour in each garment does not change with run size. What scales is the number of trained artisans we can assign, which affects lead time rather than unit cost.
Because there is no machine setup to recover. A single piece is knitted by one artisan on the same written pattern and method as a run of 1000, so there is no fixed cost to amortise.
A tech pack or sketch, the yarn or fibre you have in mind if you have one, and the target order size. We scope stitch count, yarn yield and artisan hours, and come back with an indicative price and lead time.
Send us your tech pack.
We will come back with feasibility, indicative costing and lead times for your hand-knit project.