Add the cost of the cloth, the embroidery or zari work and the labour for cutting and finishing. That gives your production cost for one piece. Add a wastage percentage to cover cloth lost in cutting and pieces rejected after work, then add any overhead such as packing, transport or electricity. For example: cloth ₹800 + zari ₹150 + labour ₹100 = ₹1,050 production cost. At 5% wastage that is ₹52.50 more, so the true cost per piece is ₹1,102.50. Quoting off the ₹1,050 figure instead of ₹1,102.50 quietly gives away ₹52.50 on every piece.

There is no single correct figure, and any calculator that hands you one is guessing. The margin that works depends on your category, how fast the stock rotates, how much credit you extend to buyers and what your competition is quoting in your own market. The practical method is to work backwards from your own numbers: take your true cost per piece from this tool, add the margin you need to cover your fixed monthly expenses across the volume you actually sell, then check the resulting price against what your buyers are paying elsewhere. A lower margin on stock that sells every week can earn more across a year than a high margin on stock that sits for six months.

Margin is profit measured against the selling price. Markup is the same profit measured against your cost. They are not the same number. On a cost of ₹1,102.50 sold at ₹1,378.13, the profit of ₹275.63 is a 20% margin (275.63 ÷ 1,378.13) but a 25% markup (275.63 ÷ 1,102.50). Traders usually say "I keep 25%" meaning markup on cost, while accountants usually mean margin on price. This tool sets the slider by margin and always shows the matching markup underneath, so both readings are visible and nobody is misled.

In this tool wastage is applied to the production cost, which is cloth plus embroidery or zari work plus labour. It is not applied to overhead, because packing and transport are not wasted when a piece is rejected. This is the cautious treatment: it covers both cloth lost in cutting and pieces that fail inspection after the work is already done, which is the more expensive case and the one most often left out of a costing sheet. If your rejections only ever happen at the cutting stage before any work is added, applying wastage to the cloth cost alone would give a slightly lower figure.