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Crochet costing after quotation: what actually moves the unit price
Crochet costing after quotation is the discipline of pricing what changes once the order is placed — and the short version is that a quoted unit price holds only for the specification the quote was built on, so almost every argument about a price increase is really an argument about which inputs moved and who agreed to them.
What a quoted price locks, and what it does not
A crochet unit price is assembled from four cost blocks: yarn, handwork time, components and packing, and overhead with margin. Each block is a function of something the buyer controls. That is the whole reason prices move after quotation — not because the factory changed its mind, but because the buyer changed an input and the block it feeds was recalculated.
Most of the disputes we see do not come from a factory refusing to hold a price. They come from a quotation that never recorded what it was holding. A quote that says “500 pieces, USD 6.80” and nothing else cannot be defended by either side three weeks later. A quote that says 500 pieces at 6.80 against 100% acrylic 5-ply in Pantone 7528, 26 cm seated height, safety eyes, no gift box, is a document you can actually price a change against.
Six changes that move the price, and what each one touches
The table below is the practical version. The middle column matters more than the direction of the arrow: buyers usually ask “how much more”, when the useful question is “which cost block are we actually re-opening”.
| Change | What it re-opens | Typical direction | Who normally absorbs it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yarn swap, same count and colour family | Material cost per piece, stitch density, sometimes gauge | Small, calculable from the sealed sample | Buyer, as a delta |
| Yarn swap with a different count or fibre | Material cost, handwork time (stitch count changes), re-sampling | Moderate, needs a new sample to confirm | Buyer, plus sampling cost |
| Colour change after dyeing or greige allocation | Stranded inventory, mill minimum dye lot, possible re-knitting | Can exceed the value of the change itself | Negotiated — usually shared, sometimes all buyer |
| Added component (safety eyes, ribbon, bell, gift box) | Component cost, assembly time, packing volume, testing scope | Moderate, and it moves the safety file | Buyer |
| Size change | Stitch count, yarn consumption, handwork hours, carton cube | Roughly proportional to surface area, not to height | Buyer |
| Volume or timing change | Setup amortisation per unit, line resequencing, freight mode | Falls with volume, rises with urgency | Whoever causes it |
On size changes, the intuitive maths is wrong
A buyer who asks for a 26 cm toy instead of 20 cm expects roughly thirty percent more cost, because thirty percent more height. Yarn consumption and stitch count scale with surface area, which for a similar shape scales with the square of a linear dimension — closer to seventy percent. This is one of the few places where a factory can show the arithmetic from the pattern itself, and it is worth asking them to, because the same calculation tells you what a smaller size should save.
On colour, the cost is often not the yarn
Changing from ecru to sage before any yarn is dyed costs almost nothing. The same change after a dye lot has been produced can mean the mill's minimum for the new shade, plus whatever of the old shade cannot be carried into another order. In handwork supply chains the stranded quantity is usually small in absolute terms and large relative to the change, which is why factories ask for colour decisions earlier than buyers expect.
Why the first small change costs more than the tenth
Setup costs are fixed per order, not per piece. A new colour standard needs a lab dip or a physical swatch approved; a new component needs to be sourced, tested for attachment strength and added to the packing list; a new size needs a revised chart and, usually, a fresh sealed sample. Spread over 500 pieces these are visible. Spread over 5,000 they nearly vanish.
This produces the counter-intuitive result that a buyer changing three things at once often pays less in total than a buyer changing one thing three times, because the second and third rounds each carry their own approval and re-sampling overhead. If you already know a change is coming, bundle it into the sampling round rather than issuing it after the order is confirmed.
Three legitimate ways to price a change
1. Delta costing
The factory recalculates only the affected cost block and charges the difference, keeping margin percentage constant. This is the right method for a yarn substitution or an added component, and it is the easiest to audit: the buyer can ask for the material price per kilogram and the grams per piece and check the arithmetic.
2. Re-quote
The order is priced again from scratch against the new specification. Correct when the change alters the production method — hand-sewn features becoming embroidered, a flat panel becoming a shaped one, a component that triggers a different test protocol. A delta computed from the old quote will understate the labour change, because the old quote amortised operations that no longer exist.
3. Open-book on the changed block
For large or repeat programmes, the factory opens the cost of the changed block only — yarn consumption, minutes per operation, component invoice — and applies the agreed margin. It costs the buyer an hour of attention and removes most of the suspicion. Factories that resist this on a change affecting a third of the order value are telling you something useful.
The clause that prevents the argument
Change control fails for a boring reason: nobody wrote down who is allowed to approve a change, or what happens to the schedule when one is approved. Five fields cover almost every dispute we have seen.
- What changed, described against the original specification line, not in prose.
- When it was requested, and against which production milestone — before yarn commit, after yarn commit, after motifs are distributed.
- Price effect, as a delta or a new unit price, with the method named.
- Schedule effect, as a new confirmed date rather than an assurance.
- Who signs, on both sides, and whether email approval counts.
Two supporting clauses are worth the ink: a cut-off date after which changes are treated as a new order, and a rule that unapproved changes are not produced. The second protects the buyer more than the factory — it is what stops a well-meant improvement from arriving in a shipment you have already sold.
What this looks like in practice
In our own programmes, quotation is issued against a written input list — the same nine inputs we ask for before quoting — and any change is answered with a delta, a new date and the cut-off it falls against. Where a change would have changed the original quote, we re-quote rather than improvise a delta, because a wrong number costs more trust than a higher one.
If you are currently holding a quote that does not state its inputs, the useful next step is not to negotiate the number but to ask what it was built on. That conversation is cheaper before the deposit than after the first change.
Frequently asked
Is a quoted crochet unit price fixed once I place the order?
Only for the specification stated in the quotation. A quote is an offer against six or seven stated inputs: yarn composition and count, colour standard, size, component list, packing, quantity band and delivery window. Change one of those and the price is no longer being held, because the cost base behind it has moved. Reputable factories say which inputs the price was built on, in writing, at quotation stage; that list is what makes later change pricing discussable instead of arbitrary.
Why does a small colour change cost more than a small yarn change?
Because they hit different cost layers. Changing yarn count within the same colour family usually changes material cost and stitch density, which is calculable from the sample. Changing colour after yarn has been dyed, or after a greige batch has been allocated, can strand inventory that was bought for the original colour, and the mill may need a minimum dye lot for the new shade. The visible change is the same size; the write-off behind it is not.
Should the factory re-quote or charge the difference?
Charge the difference for changes that touch one cost line, and re-quote when the change alters the production method. A yarn substitution is normally a delta: new material cost minus old, plus handling. A change from a sewn-on component to embroidery changes the operation sequence, the labour content and often the sampling requirement, so a delta computed from the old quote will be wrong in both directions. The rule is to re-quote whenever the change would have changed the original quote had it been known.
What is a fair expedite charge?
One that maps to the actual disruption rather than a flat percentage. Expediting usually costs overtime, a production-line resequence that pushes another order back, and sometimes air freight on materials. A charge in the region of twenty percent of order value is a common market practice for pulling a run forward inside the current production window, but it should be quoted against a specific new date, not sold as a general right to jump the queue. If a factory promises any date for a surcharge, ask what it is displacing.
Do changes after the deposit affect payment terms?
They should, and the mechanism is usually a supplementary invoice settled before the changed goods ship. The mistake buyers make is letting changes accumulate informally until final settlement, at which point the factory is holding finished goods and the buyer has lost all leverage on the pricing of each change. Price and approve each change as it happens, even when the amounts are small, so the balance at shipment reflects only the original order.
How late is too late to change an order?
The practical cut-off is the point at which materials are committed, not the point at which production starts. Once yarn is dyed to your colour standard or components are ordered to your specification, a change stops being a scheduling question and becomes a write-off question. Handwork adds a second cut-off: once motifs are distributed to households for a season, retrieving and reworking them costs more than making them again. Ask for both cut-off dates in writing when the order is confirmed.
Holding a quote you cannot reconcile? We work with a 30,000+ certified artisan network across four Chinese provinces, 8,000+ verified models and TüV Rheinland verification, and we quote against a written input list so a later change can be priced instead of argued. Send us the specification and ask for the nine inputs we quote from, then read spec-to-bulk tolerance and payment terms and deposits before you place the deposit.