Grams per garment explain an alpaca quote better than the fibre label does

The numbers behind this

Two quotes for an alpaca sweater arrive from Peru, thirty dollars apart. The instinct is to ask which of them has more alpaca in it. That instinct is what this piece is about, and where it breaks.

I had it for years. More alpaca, finer alpaca, a better grade, a higher price. It is the way the trade talks about itself. Testing it took one column I had been ignoring: net weight.

The same garment name covers three times the fibre

Divide the declared kilos by the declared garments in a shipment and you get grams per piece. Across the alpaca shipments large enough to measure, the median comes out at 458 grams.

The light tenth weighs 267 grams. The heavy tenth weighs 753.

So the heaviest garments carry close to three times the fibre of the lightest, under the same product name.

Sort by that and the price sorts with it. The light band leaves Peru at $45.18 a garment. The heavy band leaves at $75.64. That gap comes from how much yarn went in rather than from what kind of yarn it was.

Which killed my assumption, because the fibre content barely moves the price inside a single company. Baby alpaca against plain alpaca, at equal declared content and from the same company, comes out at 1.01. The blends land within a tenth of the pure article. The adjectives do very little. The grams do a lot.

Per kilo of fibre the relationship inverts

Then the number that turns the whole read around. The light band prices at $169.11 a kilo of fibre. The heavy band prices at $99.76. So the heavier garment is cheaper per kilo of the fibre inside it.

What the light garment is mostly selling is labour. A fine gauge means more stitches, more finishing and more hand work, spread across less fibre. What the heavy garment is mostly selling is the fibre itself.

That reframes the comparison. A heavy garment is buying yarn. A light garment is buying workmanship. They are two different purchases wearing the same fibre name, and comparing them on fibre percentage teaches you nothing about either.

The crowded middle is where two quotes look identical

The middle of the market deserves its own line, because that is where most orders sit. The middle band prices at $48.20, much closer to the light end than to the heavy one.

It is also the crowded lane, where two quotes are most likely to look identical on paper and differ by a hundred grams in the box.

Weight also sorts the supply base

There is a supply consequence too. The heavy end and the light end are served by different companies, and only partly by the same ones.

Knitting a 250 gram garment and knitting a 750 gram one are different machine settings, different yarn counts and often different floors. A company that is excellent at one weight is not automatically credible at the other. Asking for both in the same first order is a good way to get one of them badly.

The question almost nobody asks

A limit, because this is a pattern across the whole market rather than a rule. Weight and price move together with a real but partial relationship. There are heavy garments that price badly and light ones that price beautifully. What the number supports is a question rather than a valuation.

The question is short. Before the fibre percentage, before the micron count, before the grade name, ask for the finished weight of the garment being quoted.

Then compare the quotes on their own terms. A difference of thirty dollars between them may be nothing more than two hundred grams of yarn, which is a fact about the garment rather than a fact about the company selling it. Weight is also the easiest thing in a quote to verify. It arrives with the sample, on a kitchen scale, before any relationship is at stake.

Common questions

How much does a Peruvian alpaca sweater weigh?

458 grams at the median. The light tenth weighs 267 grams and the heavy tenth 753, so the same product name covers close to three times the fibre.

Does a heavier garment cost more?

Per garment yes, $75.64 for the heavy band against $45.18 for the light one. Per kilo of fibre it is the other way round, $99.76 against $169.11.

Why is the lighter garment more expensive per kilo?

Because it is selling labour. A fine gauge means more stitches, more finishing and more hand work spread across less fibre.

Does the fibre grade explain the price difference?

Barely. Baby alpaca against plain alpaca inside the same company comes out at 1.01, and blends land within a tenth of the pure article.

What should a buyer ask before comparing two quotes?

The finished weight of the garment being quoted. A thirty dollar difference may be two hundred grams of yarn, which is a fact about the garment rather than about the company selling it.