Our pricing principles
At Maakola, our aim is to make ethical fashion accessible to a wider audience, which is why we cut out the retailer and sell directly to you. We’ll never be as cheap as fast fashion. But by cutting out retailer markups, we can pass the savings on to you — offering beautifully made pieces at half the traditional retail price without compromising on the quality of our materials or our ethical production standards.
Why we don’t hold seasonal sales
When you buy a piece of bespoke clothing from Maakola, we make it to order especially for you. This demand-led business model means that we only produce as much as we need; unlike traditional retailers, we are not left with a mountain of unsold stock at the end of the season. That’s why you’ll never see discounted pieces on our website.
Our markups
Most clothing retailers include a markup of over 50 percent in their prices. At Maakola, our markup is 30-45 percent for clothing and 60 percent for accessories. We feel that this is the sweet spot, allowing us to maintain our integrity and keep expanding our operation while still passing the savings onto you.
What the cost of your clothes includes
It’s not just about the fabrics and the labour; there’s a whole heap of things going on behind the scenes that contribute to every Maakola garment. Here’s what we factor into the price tag to cover our costs:
- High quality natural materials
- Labour: we pay our artisans a fair wage for sewing our garments
- Design and R&D
- Administration and infrastructure costs, including IT infrastructure and storage
- Customs and duties
- Packaging
- Quality control
The value of slow fashion
At first glance, a sustainably-made garment might look more expensive than its fast-fashion equivalent, but when you dig a little deeper the value becomes clear.
- It lasts longer. Every piece of Maakola clothing has an estimated five-year lifespan (compared to 2.2 years for a piece of fast fashion). This is because we use high-quality fabrics that can withstand a minimum of 30 washes without fading, and we include a 1 ½ - 2 inch buffer in our seams so that our pieces can be altered over time.
- When we buy fast fashion, we often forget to factor in the cost of its care. At Maakola, we use fabrics that can be safely washed in the machine, or handwashed, to save on dry cleaning costs.
- We’re horrified by the amount of clothing gathering dust in wardrobes around the world (for example, an estimated 30 percent of clothing in the average UK wardrobe has not been worn in the past year). Because our pieces are custom made to your specifications, we’re confident that you’ll find yourself reaching for them time and time again, significantly bringing down the cost per wear.
