Fleece is where the money is. A blank hoodie wholesales anywhere from roughly $10 for a budget blend to $30 for a premium heavyweight — a 3× spread for what looks like “the same garment.” It isn’t the same garment, and once you can read a hoodie’s cost from the inside, you can compare quotes fairly and spot the ones that can’t be real. Here’s the breakdown, with actual maths. (For the lighter version of this exercise, see what a t-shirt costs to make.)
A hoodie is mostly fabric
The single most useful fact in fleece costing: an adult hoodie consumes roughly 0.6–0.8 kg of fleece — three to four times the fabric in a t-shirt. Fabric is therefore the dominant cost line, and everything about the fabric — weight (GSM), cotton share, brushed vs loopback, organic or not — moves the price more than anything else in the garment.
The worked example
Illustrative numbers for a 320 gsm, 80/20 cotton-poly brushed-fleece pullover hoodie at a mid-size run — your real quote depends on spec and quantity, but the shape of the maths doesn’t change:
| Cost component | Illustrative amount | What drives it |
|---|---|---|
| Fleece fabric (~0.7 kg) | $3.20–4.20 | GSM, cotton %, brushed/loopback, dye |
| Ribbing, drawcord, eyelets, labels, thread | $0.70–1.00 | Metal vs plastic trims, woven labels |
| Cutting & sewing (CMT) | $2.00–3.00 | Hood, kangaroo pocket, cuffs — a hoodie is a complex sew |
| Finishing, QC, packing | $0.30–0.50 | Inspection level, folding, poly-bags |
| Sampling & setup, amortised | $0.20–0.50 | Smaller runs carry more per piece |
| Ex-factory total | ≈ $6.50–9.00 | Before freight, duty, and margin |
That range is why catalogue blanks price where they do: a budget 280 gsm blend hoodie sells around £12–17 ex VAT in the UK trade, a 350 gsm organic premium blank from about £19 — the brand’s and distributor’s margins sit on top of factory maths very like the table above.
What moves the number most
- <strong>GSM:</strong> going from 320 to 400+ gsm adds ~25% more fibre — the heavyweight trend is a real cost, which is why it commands a real premium. <a href="/blog/heavyweight-blank-tshirts-streetwear-sourcing/">More on heavyweight blanks.</a>
- <strong>Fibre:</strong> more cotton costs more than more polyester; organic cotton adds again.
- <strong>Construction:</strong> a zip hoodie adds the zip, a facing, and sewing time — typically $1.50–2.50 over a pullover.
- <strong>Quantity:</strong> setup and sampling amortise; fabric buys hit mill minimums. The step from 300 to 1,000 pieces matters more than the step from 1,000 to 3,000.
- <strong>Decoration:</strong> printing and embroidery are separate lines — often $1–4 per placement depending on method and size.
The too-cheap hoodie trap
Here’s the sanity check that protects you from bad quotes: 0.6–0.8 kg of fleece cannot cost less than the fibre it contains. Even at a rock-bottom $3/kg fabric price, there’s about $2 of fabric in a hoodie before a single stitch. So a “$2.20 finished hoodie” you see in trade data or a marketplace quote is one of three things: a making-charge-only price where the buyer supplied the fabric, a data error — or a garment you don’t want your brand on. Price fleece bottom-up: consumption × fabric price + trims + CMT + overhead. Any quote wildly below that maths is missing something, and it’s usually the fabric.
From factory price to landed cost
The number that matters is the landed cost: ex-factory price + freight + duty. Duty is where origin bites on fleece — the EU and UK charge 12% MFN on knit hoodies and Canada 18%, while Nepal-made hoodies enter all three at 0%. On an $8 hoodie that’s roughly another dollar per garment staying in your margin. The full duty breakdown.
We’d rather explain every line of a quote than win an order on a number that can’t survive its own arithmetic. The factories that quote below the cost of their fabric are telling you something — listen.
We make hoodies and fleece from 280 to 400+ gsm, brushed or loopback, from about 1,000 pieces per style. Send us your target spec and quantity and we’ll return a line-by-line quote — fabric, trims, CMT, and landed cost, itemised.