When a customer brings their own fabric, the most visible cost in the job disappears — and with it, most tailors' method for pricing. What remains is time and skill, which are harder to quote and far easier to undersell.
Know what an hour of your bench costs
Add your monthly costs: rent, power, machine servicing, thread and notions, and what you need to earn. Divide by the hours you can realistically work — not the hours in the month, because fittings, sourcing and customer conversations consume plenty of them.
That hourly figure is the floor. Every job is priced from it.
Estimate the whole job, not the sewing
Sewing is one part of the work. Measuring, cutting, fittings, adjustments after a fitting, pressing and finishing all take time. Tailors who quote from sewing time alone routinely deliver twice the work they charged for.
Someone else's fabric carries risk
Customer-supplied material introduces problems you did not choose. Insufficient yardage. Fabric that behaves badly under the needle. A flaw discovered mid-cut. And a cutting error you cannot fix by taking another metre off the roll.
Agree before you cut: check the quantity, note the fabric's condition, and be clear about what happens if the material proves short or unsuitable. That conversation costs a few minutes and prevents most disputes.
Complexity, not garment type
Two dresses can differ by a factor of three in hours. Linings, boning, hand-finishing, matched patterns, difficult fastenings — these drive time far more than what the garment is called. Price the construction, not the label.
Alterations deserve a minimum
A small alteration still consumes handling, fitting, machine setup and a customer conversation. A minimum charge is what keeps small jobs from costing you money.
Record time to price better
Note the hours a job actually took against what you quoted. After a dozen jobs the pattern is unmistakable, and quoting stops being guesswork.
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