Landed cost, honestly: what a piece really costs on your shelf.
Ex-works, FOB, CIF, DDP — and the dull, entirely predictable list of charges between the vessel and your shelf. How to price a lot the way it will actually reach you.
A buyer will spend three days arguing over five cents on the offer sheet, then accept without a single question a freight invoice that costs him twenty. The price we quote is the price at one point on a long journey. It is not the price on your shelf. Every serious buyer in this trade works backwards from the shelf — so here is the whole road, in order.
First, know which price you are being quoted
Ex-works means the goods are yours where they stand, in Dhaka, and every metre after that is your problem. FOB Chittagong means we deliver them cleared and loaded onto the vessel. CIF adds the ocean freight and the insurance to your port. DDP means we hand them to you inland, duty paid, nothing left to settle. Four prices for the same shirt, and between the first and the last there can be a third of the value.
So when a competing offer looks cheaper, check the term before you check the number. A good share of the cheaper quotes in this trade are simply quoted from further back down the road.
The list nobody hides and everybody forgets
Between the vessel and your shelf sits a short, dull, entirely predictable list: ocean freight; terminal handling at both ends; documentation and bill of lading fees; marine insurance; customs duty; brokerage and clearance; port storage if you are slow to collect; inland trucking to your warehouse; bank charges on the transfer; and the exchange rate on the day you actually pay, not the day you agreed. None of it is secret. All of it is forgotten, and then blamed on the seller.
"The five cents you win on the phone can be lost twice over at the border."
The container decides more than the negotiation
Freight is charged by the box, not by the piece. A forty-foot high cube gives you roughly seventy-six cubic metres. Poly-bagged tees, packed properly, will fill it with something near twenty-five thousand pieces. Fleece hoodies, three times the volume, closer to eight thousand. The freight bill is much the same either way — so the identical ocean rate lands at twelve cents a piece on tees and nearer forty on fleece.
This is the arithmetic behind advice that sounds like sales talk. Fill the box. A part load, or a twenty-footer taken half empty, can double your freight per piece and quietly erase the discount you fought for. And ask for today's ocean rate, never last year's — it moves every week, in both directions.
Duty is the biggest single number, and it follows your flag
Into Canada, Bangladesh apparel currently enters duty-free under the Least-Developed Country Tariff; without it the ordinary rate on apparel sits around seventeen to eighteen per cent. Into the EU and the UK, duty-free as well, under Everything But Arms and the UK's developing-countries scheme. Into the United States, there is no preference for apparel from anywhere: a cotton knit tee pays 16.5 per cent, cotton trousers 16.6, and man-made blends climb toward thirty-two.
Read that last line again, because it catches people. Fibre content can change your duty more than haggling ever changes your price. For any US-bound program, get the HS code and the fibre breakdown onto the offer sheet before you agree a number. In the Gulf, the common external tariff is a flat five per cent and re-export through Jebel Ali is straightforward — which is one reason branded goods move that way. In South Africa and much of the continent, apparel duty is among the highest in the world, and it must be in your model from the first conversation.
And what changes in November
Bangladesh graduates from least-developed country status on 24 November 2026. It is not a cliff. The EU has granted a three-year transition, so duty-free access under EBA runs to roughly the end of 2029, and the UK scheme moves broadly in step. Canada has extended its preference programme to 2034 and has proposed a three-year transition out of the LDCT — the fine print is still settling, so confirm it with your own broker before you commit a 2027 program on paper. For the United States nothing changes, because apparel never had the benefit to lose.
None of this alters the price of the goods. All of it alters the price on your shelf, and a buyer planning a year out should be asking these questions now rather than in October.
A worked example
Twenty-five thousand cotton tees, one forty-foot high cube, quoted at US $1.60 FOB Chittagong. Goods: $40,000. Ocean freight, terminals at both ends, documents and insurance — call it $3,000 for the exercise. That is twelve cents a piece. Clearance, brokerage and inland delivery, another $800, or three cents more.
Into Canada at zero duty, that lot lands at about $1.75 a piece. The same lot into the United States pays 16.5 per cent on the goods value — $6,600, or twenty-six cents — and lands at $2.01. Same shirt, same factory, same negotiation. Twenty-six cents of difference decided by a flag rather than a phone call.
How to buy on this basis
Ask for the landed number, not only the FOB — any seller worth dealing with can build it with you line by line. Fix the incoterm in writing before you fix the price. Put the HS code and fibre content on the offer sheet. Fill the container. And be honest with yourself about the first lot: a trial shipment always carries a worse freight-per-piece than a running program does. That is tuition, not a bad deal. Start small, then scale — and watch the per-piece numbers improve as you do.
We quote both ways. FOB for buyers who run their own freight desk, landed for buyers who want one number and no surprises. Ask for whichever you actually need. Nobody in this trade should be surprised at his own port.