What does it actually cost to land a garment in Australia?
Factory price is the smallest part of the number. Here is how freight, duty and GST turn a $12 dress into something else entirely.
Most founders quote themselves the factory price and call it the cost. It is not. The number that decides your margin is the landed cost: the factory price plus freight, insurance, customs duty, GST treatment, bank fees and any one-off sampling or tooling spread across the run.
Take a dress quoted at USD $12.00. At an exchange rate of 0.65 AUD per USD, that is about AUD $18.46 before anything else. Add sea freight of roughly $1.50 a unit on a small order, insurance at half a percent, and customs duty at 5% of the FOB value, and you are already near AUD $21. If you are not registered for GST, add another 10% at the border that you cannot claim back.
Duty on most apparel entering Australia is 5%, and GST of 10% applies on the value of the taxable importation. Both depend on tariff classification and origin, so confirm the current position with a customs broker before you commit. Free trade agreements can reduce or remove the duty for some origins.
The practical lesson is simple. Build the landed cost before you set the retail price, not after the invoice arrives. Use the calculator to model your own numbers, then price against the landed figure with enough intake margin to survive a normal discount cycle.
Find out what your product really costs, then price it so the business survives.
Most brands calculate cost price and forget freight, duty, sampling, returns and the discount they always end up giving. Prox rebuilds the number properly, sets the retail price against it, and tells you what has to change.
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