Apparel Merchandising and Costing
From enquiry to shipment: feasibility, garment costing, negotiation, margin risk, the time-and-action plan and the documents that get an order paid.
Written by Sanjeewa Dehiwalage · Free online garment-industry education
3 modules · 10 subjects Intermediate to advanced About 10–14 hours of reading and quizzes at your own pace
What this course is
A free, self-paced merchandising course: the end-to-end merchandising workflow, order enquiry and feasibility, garment costing and consumption, price negotiation, margin and commercial risk, critical path and time-and-action management, contracts, documentation and buyer escalation. Three modules, each ending with a five-question quiz.
Who it is for
- • Merchandisers and assistant merchandisers in factories and buying houses
- • Costing and commercial staff
- • Planners and production managers who work against a TNA
- • Anyone who has to defend a quoted price
What you will be able to do
- • Judge whether an enquiry is feasible before committing a price or a date
- • Build a garment cost sheet from consumption, trims, CM and overhead to FOB
- • Negotiate a price knowing exactly which line you are giving away
- • Run a time-and-action plan with a real critical path and escalate early
- • Keep the commercial documents that protect payment and the order
Modules
Module 1 — Commercial Foundations
Read an enquiry properly: what the buyer is really asking for, whether the factory can do it, and what must be confirmed before a price goes out.
2 subjects · five-question quiz
Module 2 — Costing and Negotiation
Build a cost sheet you can defend line by line, and negotiate without giving away the margin by accident.
4 subjects · five-question quiz
Module 3 — Order Execution
Run the order to shipment on a critical path, with contracts and documents in order and escalation that happens early enough to matter.
4 subjects · five-question quiz
Certificate
Pass every module quiz and you can download a completion certificate from the certificate page. It is a self-study record, not an accredited qualification.