A seamstress doing hems, zips and take-ins may handle a dozen garments in a day. Each one is small enough to price by feel, and that is the trap. Five minutes missed on each job is an hour a day of unpaid work.
This guide builds a list for repair and alteration work from your own stopwatch. If you also make garments from scratch, our tailor price list guide covers stitching prices and how to lay the list out. No market prices appear here, because another town's prices tell you nothing about your costs. All figures below are examples.
Write down every service you really do
Go through your last month of tickets or your notebook and list what came in. Name each job the way a customer would say it: trouser hem, lined skirt hem, jacket zip, take in waist, shorten sleeves, patch a pocket.
Split any job that hides two levels of work. A plain trouser hem and a hem with an original cuff are different jobs. So are a skirt hem and a lined skirt hem. If the same name can take 20 minutes or an hour, the name needs splitting.
Time each job in two parts
Most people time the sewing and forget everything around it. Time these two parts apart for a few weeks:
- Handling: booking in, writing the ticket, pinning on the customer, finding the garment again, handing it back.
- Bench: unpicking, marking, sewing, pressing.
Handling time barely changes with the size of the job, which is why tiny jobs lose the most money. Unpicking belongs in bench time too. One forum poster asked the question plenty of seamstresses have faced: "What do you charge for ripping something out that took an hour." The answer is the same rate as any other hour, because it is an hour.
A kitchen timer and a sheet by the machine will do. Time each job at least three or four times, on different garments, and use a typical figure. Your fastest run is the wrong number to use.
Turn minutes into prices
You need one figure first: what a chargeable hour must bring in. One poster on the Threads forum put it plainly: "Set an hourly wage, based on overheads, plus what you need to earn to live on."
Example: rent, power, repairs and your own wage come to 4,800 a month. You have 200 chargeable hours in that month. That makes 24 an hour, or 0.40 a minute.
| Job (example) | Handling min | Bench min | Total min | At 0.40 | List price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trouser hem, plain | 10 | 20 | 30 | 12.00 | 12 |
| Shorten shirt sleeves | 10 | 35 | 45 | 18.00 | 18 |
| Take in waist | 10 | 40 | 50 | 20.00 | 20 |
| Lined skirt hem | 10 | 50 | 60 | 24.00 | 25 |
| Replace jacket zip, zip extra | 10 | 65 | 75 | 30.00 | 30 |
The table also shows what a very short job costs you. A button with 3 minutes at the bench still carries 10 minutes of handling, so 13 minutes comes to 5.20.
Keep labour and materials apart
Everyday thread and needles belong in your monthly costs. Anything bought for one job goes on its own line: zips, lining, elastic, buttons, patches.
Charge a little more than you paid, because you went out to buy it and you hold stock that may sit for months. Example: a jacket zip costs 6. Adding 25% brings it to 7.50, listed at 8. With the labour of 30, the customer pays 38.
Listing the two parts apart helps when a customer brings their own zip. The labour stays at 30 and the customer can see why. It also keeps you honest when zip prices move, since you change one line and leave the labour alone.
Decide on rush and awkward work before you need to
You will be asked for a same-day hem at the worst moment, so settle the rule in a calm hour. One Threads poster's rule of thumb was to "charge half again what you'd normally charge" for a rush job, and to tell the customer what the added charge is for. On the same thread, another poster described a friend who adds an extra 20% for troublesome problems.
Treat those as starting points to test. In the example list, half again turns a 12 hem into 18. An extra 20% for a hem on slippery cloth turns 25 into 30.
Write down what counts as awkward so the charge is the same every time:
- Beaded or sequinned areas that need stones moved out of the seam.
- Stretch, silky or very fine cloth.
- Garments brought in dirty, which you should ask to have cleaned first.
- Earlier repairs that have to be undone.
Check the list against real hours
A price list made once goes stale without anyone noticing. Two small checks keep it true.
Check the slow jobs
Keep timing a few common jobs each month and compare them with the list.
| Job (example) | Minutes on list | Real average | Decision |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trouser hem, plain | 30 | 28 | Keep at 12 |
| Replace jacket zip | 75 | 95 | Raise to 38 |
At 0.40 a minute, 95 minutes is 38. Either the price moves, or you find out why the zip takes 20 minutes longer than you thought.
Check the week as a whole
Add up a week's labour takings, leaving materials out, and divide by the hours you spent on work. Example: 720 taken over 36 hours is 20 an hour, against the 24 you need. That gap is 4 an hour, or 144 for the week. A shortfall like that means the list is too low, too much time is going unbilled, or the shop needs more work in the door.
Raise prices in small steps, put a date on each new list, and move your usual customers over with a short note at the counter.
Keep the records where the work happens
All of this works on a sheet of paper. The sheet tends to fall behind on busy weeks, though, and those are the weeks you most want the numbers. Tailoq keeps the sums closer to the bench: staff type in hours as a job finishes, and you can compare what each job really cost with its price. Whichever way you record it, the habit is what pays. Time the work, then let the numbers set the list.
See how Tailoq adds up material, labour and outside work into a cost for each job.
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