Sporting goods costing: one product, several cost sheets underneath
A racket, a running shoe, a bicycle each combine plastic, textile, wood, leather and metal in one item. How to cost each sub-assembly by its own trade and add them up without losing the detail.
This industry has no process chain of its own. It **borrows several other industries chains inside a single product** — a racket, a running shoe and a bicycle each combine molded plastic, textile, metal and sometimes wood or leather.
So this guide does not teach a new method. It covers how to **combine** several cost sheets, and the one place people go wrong when combining them.
Split the product into sub-assemblies first
| Sub-assembly made of | Use this guide | Unit of consumption |
|---|---|---|
| Molded plastic | Injection molding | Shot weight divided by cavities |
| Fabric, webbing | Garment manufacturing | Consumption from the marker |
| Leather | Leather goods | Area issued over units delivered |
| Wood | Furniture | Sheets, linear meters or sets |
| Machined or fabricated metal | CNC machining or sheet metal | Stock issued |
| Bought-in assemblies | Machine build, bought-out parts section | Purchase price times quantity |
The combining error: one merged materials line
The temptation is to enter a single materials line with the total. It is quick, and the total is still right — but the sheet loses the ability to answer the next question, which is **which sub-assembly carries the cost**.
In this industry the answer is frequently surprising. A component that looks minor can outweigh the headline one, either because its material is expensive or because it takes disproportionate assembly time. With one line, you never find out.
Final assembly: the line most often dropped
A multi-part product needs joining, and that labor belongs to no sub-assembly. It gets omitted precisely because every sub-assembly already carries labor of its own.
Enter it as its own labor line — final assembly. On a product with many small parts it can exceed the labor in any individual sub-assembly.
The ten categories
Once the split is done, the other nine categories work normally: machine time and labor summed from the sub-assemblies plus the final assembly line; scrap, rework, outside processing, tooling, packaging, freight and overhead exactly as the other guides describe.
Packaging deserves attention in consumer goods — it is the first thing the buyer sees, so it is not the place to economize first.
Related guides
- Injection molding cost per part: shot weight, cycle time and cavitation
Costing a molded part across all ten categories. Three numbers dominate everything else — shot weight, cycle time and how many parts come out of each cycle — and getting any of them wrong moves the whole sheet.
- Garment costing: the ten categories behind a CM price
How a garment cost is actually built — fabric, trims, cutting, sewing minutes, finishing, packing — and why the CM number quoted to a buyer only makes sense once you know what sits underneath it.
- Costing a machine build: roll up from parts, do not divide down from hours
A machine is an assembly of made parts, bought parts and subcontracted parts, each costed differently. How to roll them up, where the double count hides, and why commissioning is a cost line.