Recommendations for polyviscose kilt

[Steve Ashton]

Purgy,

Yes, it is perfectly fine to give names and quote prices readily available to the public,

With that said - When looking at any item offered for sale take a few things into account

1) The cost of the raw materials - In the case of a kilt this includes the fabric, the stabilizer and interfacing, the straps and buckles and the thread.
The wholesale cost of 4 meters of Marton Mills P/V fabric (enough for an 8 yd kilt) is £50.00-£54.00.

2) The labor - Kilt making is a skilled labor job. You do not just produce a quality garment on the first go.
A machine stitched kilt can be made quicker than a hand stitched one but it still takes more than a couple of hours to do a respectable job.
Then use your local minimum wage. (Do you work for minimum wage?) The minimum wage in the UK in 2020 is £8.72per hour, $11.06cdn in Canada and $7.25usd to $15.00in the US .

3) The shop overhead - This is such things as paying the electric bill to keep the lights on, Mortgage or rent on your space, and all the little things like toilet paper, a cash register, and display shelving. Then there is shipping, taxes and duty.
All of these added to the wholesale cost of material and labor result in the retail costs to the customer.

Then take these into consideration when looking at the retail cost of a kilt and ask yourself - If the kilt is listed at £40.00, how much of that is for the fabric, how much for the labor, how much for the overhead?
Honestly, the only way to offer a kilt for £40.00 is to use inexpensive fabrics and hire labor at significantly lower rates than minimum wage.
Heck, the wholesale cost for 4 meters of Marton Mills fabric alone is more than £40.00.
4.5 hours of labor in the UK is £40.00. (the average amount of time it took me to machine stitch a kilt was 8.5 to 10.5 hours. That is a minimum of $199.00cdn in my fabric and labor costs without the overhead.)(Most hand stitched kilt makers charge between $350.00usd and $450.00usd for their labor alone. That works out to right about minimum wage.)

If what you are looking for is a Pub Kilt that you can spill a beer on, or trash playing paint ball, then maybe a £40.00 kilt is what you need.

If you want a kilt to go to dinner with your wife, or for more formal occasions like a wedding, then perhaps a £40.00 would not be the best choice.

Oh, and as an aside, just because a kilt is made in, or sold in, Scotland is no guarantee of a quality garment. Just walk down the Royal Mile of Edinburgh to see that fact. Many of the most skilled kilt makers are in N. America.