How much does it cost to manufacture a t-shirt in Bangladesh?

Roughly $2.40–$4.20 FOB per piece for a standard 180 GSM cotton tee, assuming moderate volumes of 500–1,000 pieces per colour — go lower and the factory's setup costs land on fewer garments. Fabric drives the number more than anything else in a garment manufacturing cost breakdown for Bangladesh: it eats 38–52% of the FOB price, so switching to combed yarn, a custom dye lot or an added print moves your quote before the sewing line even gets involved. The CM cost itself is comparatively small — a basic jersey tee was costed at about $0.50 to cut and make in a 2023 study of Bangladeshi factory cost sheets, since it's just a few seams and a hem. Ask for that split on any quote; a factory that won't itemise fabric versus CM is hiding which line is inflated.

Is Bangladesh cheaper than China for clothing manufacturing?

Usually, yes, on unit price — particularly for high-volume basics and knitwear, where Bangladesh's apparel sourcing infrastructure is built to compete. The FOB build-up explains why: fabric is the largest part of the price, 38–52% on Bangladeshi cost sheets, so the real gap between the two shows up in the smaller CM and factory-margin lines, the pieces tied to wages and overhead rather than raw material. China earns its premium back on complex construction, technical fabrics, very short runs and speed to market — capability Bangladesh's volume-oriented lines aren't set up to chase. Plenty of brands don't pick one over the other; they run basics out of Bangladesh and keep the fiddly, fast-turn styles in China.

What is a good MOQ to start with?

Around 500 pieces per style per colour is where most compliant export factories in Bangladesh get comfortable — that's the number behind typical FOB quotes for tees, polos and hoodies, with denim usually wanting 800–1,000 per style because of fabric and wash-recipe minimums. Go lower and you'll pay for it: markers, machine time and fabric bookings cost roughly the same whether you're running 300 pieces or 3,000, so a small order carries that overhead per unit, often 15–30% above the standard price. If you're still testing a style, build that premium into your budget rather than being surprised by it on the invoice.

What does FOB actually include?

Materials, manufacturing, packing, export clearance, and getting your goods loaded onto the vessel at the port of origin — that's the whole FOB price breakdown, and it's why most first-time buyers should quote FOB rather than CM. The factory owns the sourcing headache instead of you. What it doesn't cover: ocean freight, insurance, import duty, and getting the container from your port to your warehouse. Those add up. Once freight, duty, inspection and testing are in, expect your landed cost to sit 25–40% above the FOB figure, and at the top of that range or above for the United States, where duty on a cotton t-shirt alone is 26.5% as of October 2026 — get a real freight quote and your duty rate before building a margin around the number on the factory's invoice.

How much should I budget for samples?

$100–$310 per style for one development, one fit and one pre-production sample at $30–$150 each, and more if a round has to be repeated before a style is cleared for bulk. Much of that spend is non-refundable, though some factories will credit it against your bulk order once you commit. It stings to pay that much for one garment. It stings a lot less than discovering a fit problem after 2,000 pieces have already been cut, sewn and shipped — at that point you're not paying for a sample anymore, you're paying for rework, air freight, or markdowns on stock nobody wants.

Why did my price go up after I approved the sample?

Because the sample you signed off on doesn't match the costed spec anymore — a heavier fabric got swapped in, someone added a label, a trim changed. Every one of those touches a different line in the FOB price breakdown: fabric, trims and accessories, or the wash/print/embroidery allowance, all quoted separately at the start. Fabric alone is 38–52% of FOB, so even a small GSM bump or a fabric substitution shows up fast in the total. Don't accept a single new number — ask for a revised cost sheet that shows exactly which line moved and why, and check it against the original.

Do prices change through the year?

Yes. Cotton is a traded commodity, so its price moves, and because fabric makes up 38–52% of an FOB quote, a cotton-market swing shows up in your garment manufacturing cost faster than any other input would. Factory capacity also gets tight ahead of peak Western retail seasons — everyone wants the same production slots at once, and prices and lead times both suffer for it. Book early in the season and you'll generally get better rates and more attention on your line. It also puts you closer to the roughly 10,000-piece threshold where fabric gets booked in fuller batches and factories start negotiating downward instead of up.

Clothing Manufacturing Cost in Bangladesh

In short

A basic 180 GSM cotton t-shirt costs roughly US$2.40 to US$4.20 FOB in Bangladesh at moderate volumes, a polo US$4.50 to US$8.00 and a fleece hoodie US$7.50 to US$13.00. Fabric is the largest part of the price. Freight, duty, inspection and testing typically add 25 to 40%, with United States buyers at the top of that range or above.

A printed costing sheet with a fabric swatch and calculator

You have a design, a rough quantity in mind, and one question you cannot get a straight answer to: what will this actually cost to make?

Ask three factories and you get three numbers, none of them explained. One quotes $3.10. One quotes $4.80. One asks for your tech pack before saying anything at all. The gap is not because someone is cheating you. A garment price is built from five or six moving parts, and most quotes hand you the total without the arithmetic.

This guide takes the total apart: what sits inside an FOB price, what a factory means by CM, what typical products cost per piece, and which expenses show up after the invoice. By the end you will be able to read a quote line by line, spot the number that is out of place, and build a landed cost you can price a product against.

Why Bangladesh

Bangladesh is the world's second-largest apparel exporter, shipping $38.70 billion in ready-made garments in FY2025-26 (July 2025 to June 2026), down 1.6% from $39.35 billion the year before — about 81% of national export earnings. Scale is the point: mills, trim suppliers, washing plants and finishing units all sit within a few hours of each other, so a factory rarely imports a component and waits. It also means competition, and a country with thousands of export-ready factories does not sustain inflated prices for long.

$38.70B

Bangladesh ready-made garment exports, FY2025-26 (EPB data via BGMEA)

What goes into a garment price

Every quote you receive is one of three things, and knowing which one you are looking at is the first step.

CM (Cut & Make) — the factory's labour and overhead only. You supply fabric and trims. Sometimes written CMT, adding Trim.
FOB (Free On Board) — the factory buys everything, makes the garment, and delivers it loaded onto the vessel at port. The standard for apparel sourcing.
CIF or DDP — FOB plus freight and insurance, and in the case of DDP, duty and delivery to your door.

Most first-time buyers should be quoting FOB. It puts material sourcing on the party who does it every day, and it gives you one number to compare across suppliers.

The FOB build-up

Here is roughly how a $4.00 FOB knit garment divides. Percentages shift by product — a jacket carries more trim, a plain tee almost none — but the shape holds.

Indicative FOB cost composition. Fabric dominates in nearly every product.
Cost component	Share of FOB	What it covers	Who controls it
Fabric	38–52%	Yarn, knitting or weaving, dyeing, finishing	Your fabric choice and GSM
Trims & accessories	5–12%	Labels, zips, buttons, thread, elastic, polybags	Your spec and branding
CM (cut & make)	15–25%	Cutting, sewing, finishing, factory overhead	Design complexity
Wash / print / embroidery	0–15%	Garment wash, screen print, embroidery	Optional, adds up fast
Factory margin & compliance	8–12%	Profit, audits, certifications, testing	Factory tier

The lesson buyers keep relearning: fabric is the price. If a quote comes back higher than expected, the answer is almost never in the sewing rate. It is in the yarn count, the GSM, or the fact that you asked for a custom dye colour.

What cut & make actually costs

Cut and make is the smaller part of the price. A 2023 study of cost sheets from four Bangladeshi factories recorded CM of $0.50 a piece on a $3.28 basic t-shirt (15%), $0.75 on a $4.41 polo (17%), $1.75 on a $7.45 woven shirt (23.5%) and $2.17 on $9.68 woven trousers (22%). Heavier and more complex garments, such as fleece hoodies, five-pocket denim and padded outerwear, carry more sewing minutes and a higher CM, so ask each factory for the CM line on your own style.

The difference from one style to the next is about operations, not exploitation. A tee with a set-in sleeve, side seams, a neck tape and a hem takes fewer machine minutes than one with coverstitch detailing and a custom collar rib.

Bangladesh's statutory minimum wage for entry-level RMG workers is BDT 12,500 per month (about $102 at October 2026 exchange rates), in force since December 2023 — a 56% rise from the previous BDT 8,000. A 9% annual increment was agreed in December 2024, and the 2026 labour-law amendments cut the review cycle from five years to three, so unions are pressing for a new wage board before the end of 2026. It matters to you as a buyer: quotes well below the market band mean a corner is being cut somewhere, and rarely one you want your brand attached to.

Typical FOB prices by product

These ranges are indicative factory FOB prices at moderate volumes (roughly 1,000–5,000 pieces per style), with mid-weight standard fabrics and no heavy embellishment. A supplier's own starting price can sit above them, depending on fabric, quantity and the shipping term quoted. Treat them as a sanity check, not a quotation.

Indicative FOB ranges at moderate volume. Below MOQ, expect 15–30% higher unit prices.
Product	Typical FOB (USD)	Common MOQ	Biggest cost driver
Basic cotton t-shirt (180 GSM)	$2.40 – $4.20	500–1,000 / colour	Fabric GSM and yarn quality
Piqué polo shirt	$4.50 – $8.00	500 / colour	Collar and cuff rib, fabric
Fleece hoodie (320 GSM)	$7.50 – $13.00	500 / colour	Fabric weight, drawcord and metal trims
Denim jeans (non-stretch)	$8.00 – $16.00	800–1,000 / style	Denim quality and wash recipe
Woven shirt (poplin)	$5.50 – $10.00	500 / colour	Fabric count, interlining, buttons

Two adjustments matter. Below your factory's comfortable MOQ, expect 15–30% higher unit prices — the setup cost is the same whether you make 300 pieces or 3,000. Above roughly 10,000 pieces per style, expect to negotiate downward, because fabric can be booked in fuller batches.

The costs that are not in the quote

FOB gets goods onto a ship. It does not get them into your warehouse or onto a shelf. Budget for these separately or your margin calculation will be wrong from day one.

Sampling — $30 to $150 per sample, so about $100 to $310 per style for one proto, one fit and one pre-production sample, and more if a round is repeated. Often non-refundable, sometimes credited against bulk.
Fabric development — a colour that does not yet exist means lab dips and a possible minimum dye lot charge.
Freight — sea is the economical choice; air can cost roughly five to eight times more per kilo and is a rescue tool, not a plan.
Duty and tariffs — depends entirely on your destination market and any preferential trade arrangement.
Third-party inspection — $250 to $400 per man-day. Worth every dollar on a first order.
Lab testing — colourfastness, shrinkage, fibre composition. Often required by retailers. Children's wear sold in the United States must by law also be safety-tested by a CPSC-accepted laboratory before the importer certifies it.

A workable rule for a first order: assume landed cost is 25–40% above FOB by the time goods reach your warehouse. For the United States, expect the top of that range or more: a cotton t-shirt pays 16.5% duty plus a 10% additional tariff in force since 24 July 2026, before freight. Confirm the real figure once you have a freight quote and your duty rate.

Why the cheapest quote is usually the expensive one

Price is a signal about what a factory is set up to do. A quote that undercuts the market by 30% typically means one of three things: the factory is subcontracting to a unit you have not audited, it is substituting a lighter fabric than your spec, or it is quoting a volume it expects you to exceed.

There is a real quality tier here, and it is visible in things you can verify. Bangladesh now hosts 291 LEED-certified garment factories, according to BGMEA's website on 1 October 2026 — more than any other country. Those facilities cost more to run and their prices reflect it. For many brands the premium is small and the risk reduction is large.

“Quote three factories against the same tech pack, and require each quote broken into fabric, trims, CM and wash. A supplier who will not itemise is telling you something.”

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to manufacture a t-shirt in Bangladesh?
Roughly $2.40–$4.20 FOB per piece for a standard 180 GSM cotton tee, assuming moderate volumes of 500–1,000 pieces per colour — go lower and the factory's setup costs land on fewer garments. Fabric drives the number more than anything else in a garment manufacturing cost breakdown for Bangladesh: it eats 38–52% of the FOB price, so switching to combed yarn, a custom dye lot or an added print moves your quote before the sewing line even gets involved. The CM cost itself is comparatively small — a basic jersey tee was costed at about $0.50 to cut and make in a 2023 study of Bangladeshi factory cost sheets, since it's just a few seams and a hem. Ask for that split on any quote; a factory that won't itemise fabric versus CM is hiding which line is inflated.
Is Bangladesh cheaper than China for clothing manufacturing?
Usually, yes, on unit price — particularly for high-volume basics and knitwear, where Bangladesh's apparel sourcing infrastructure is built to compete. The FOB build-up explains why: fabric is the largest part of the price, 38–52% on Bangladeshi cost sheets, so the real gap between the two shows up in the smaller CM and factory-margin lines, the pieces tied to wages and overhead rather than raw material. China earns its premium back on complex construction, technical fabrics, very short runs and speed to market — capability Bangladesh's volume-oriented lines aren't set up to chase. Plenty of brands don't pick one over the other; they run basics out of Bangladesh and keep the fiddly, fast-turn styles in China.
What is a good MOQ to start with?
Around 500 pieces per style per colour is where most compliant export factories in Bangladesh get comfortable — that's the number behind typical FOB quotes for tees, polos and hoodies, with denim usually wanting 800–1,000 per style because of fabric and wash-recipe minimums. Go lower and you'll pay for it: markers, machine time and fabric bookings cost roughly the same whether you're running 300 pieces or 3,000, so a small order carries that overhead per unit, often 15–30% above the standard price. If you're still testing a style, build that premium into your budget rather than being surprised by it on the invoice.
What does FOB actually include?
Materials, manufacturing, packing, export clearance, and getting your goods loaded onto the vessel at the port of origin — that's the whole FOB price breakdown, and it's why most first-time buyers should quote FOB rather than CM. The factory owns the sourcing headache instead of you. What it doesn't cover: ocean freight, insurance, import duty, and getting the container from your port to your warehouse. Those add up. Once freight, duty, inspection and testing are in, expect your landed cost to sit 25–40% above the FOB figure, and at the top of that range or above for the United States, where duty on a cotton t-shirt alone is 26.5% as of October 2026 — get a real freight quote and your duty rate before building a margin around the number on the factory's invoice.
How much should I budget for samples?
$100–$310 per style for one development, one fit and one pre-production sample at $30–$150 each, and more if a round has to be repeated before a style is cleared for bulk. Much of that spend is non-refundable, though some factories will credit it against your bulk order once you commit. It stings to pay that much for one garment. It stings a lot less than discovering a fit problem after 2,000 pieces have already been cut, sewn and shipped — at that point you're not paying for a sample anymore, you're paying for rework, air freight, or markdowns on stock nobody wants.
Why did my price go up after I approved the sample?
Because the sample you signed off on doesn't match the costed spec anymore — a heavier fabric got swapped in, someone added a label, a trim changed. Every one of those touches a different line in the FOB price breakdown: fabric, trims and accessories, or the wash/print/embroidery allowance, all quoted separately at the start. Fabric alone is 38–52% of FOB, so even a small GSM bump or a fabric substitution shows up fast in the total. Don't accept a single new number — ask for a revised cost sheet that shows exactly which line moved and why, and check it against the original.
Do prices change through the year?
Yes. Cotton is a traded commodity, so its price moves, and because fabric makes up 38–52% of an FOB quote, a cotton-market swing shows up in your garment manufacturing cost faster than any other input would. Factory capacity also gets tight ahead of peak Western retail seasons — everyone wants the same production slots at once, and prices and lead times both suffer for it. Book early in the season and you'll generally get better rates and more attention on your line. It also puts you closer to the roughly 10,000-piece threshold where fabric gets booked in fuller batches and factories start negotiating downward instead of up.

The cost of manufacturing clothes in Bangladesh is not one number — it is fabric, trims, cut-and-make, finishing and margin, stacked into an FOB price and then extended by freight, duty and inspection into a landed cost. Fabric dominates. MOQ moves your unit price more than negotiation does. And the cheapest quote on the table is usually the one hiding the most.

Send us your tech pack, or a sketch and a target price, and we will come back with an itemised costing you can actually interrogate. Want to sanity-check your own margin before that call? Our group company Collective Studio built a free pricing calculator that works back from cost and retail price to your actual margin and markup, with industry benchmarks to compare against.

Sources

Where to next

Written by

Homaira Jashim

Director, Belle Vouz Ltd

Homaira Jashim is a director of Belle Vouz Ltd and a co-founder of Collective Studio Ltd, its group company in Narayanganj. She works with brands from first enquiry to repeat orders.

More about the team

Request a Quote

Free tools

Free tools for clothing brands

MOQ, pricing and AQL calculators, a GSM ⇄ oz converter, a fillable tech pack template and a manufacturing glossary — built by our group company, Collective Studio, free to use.

Explore the tools

Clothing manufacturing cost in Bangladesh: a real breakdown