There is no single price for Peruvian knitwear, and that is the useful part

The numbers behind this

I wanted to publish a single number for what Peruvian alpaca knitwear costs. I could not, and the reason turned out to be more useful than the number would have been.

The product code that holds Peruvian knitwear holds two industries.

Two industries under one code

On one side, sweaters: 8.16 million garments at $21.93 apiece, in median shipments of 21.

On the other, sweatshirts, which is hoodies and athleisure: 5.15 million garments at $19.62, in median shipments of 38.

Those two prices are close enough that any average of them looks harmless. That is what makes the code dangerous to read: nothing about the headline number warns you that it is holding two trades at once.

Then the fibre. Alpaca is 10.4% of the sweater volume and 0.08% of the sweatshirt volume. On the sweatshirt side that is an absence rather than a small share. In a market of millions of garments, the alpaca ones number in the low thousands.

Cardigans sit at the far end of the same code: $42.73 a garment, with a fifth of that volume in alpaca and a median shipment of 14 garments.

So one code contains a cardigan business shipping a dozen or so pieces at a time in noble fibre. It also contains a hoodie business shipping several dozen at a time in cotton and synthetics. The only thing those two share is that a machine knitted them.

Why the single number died

Any average of this code is a weighted blend of two trades, and the weights are set by the hoodie side, because it carries the volume.

The consequence for reading the market is direct. A headline saying Peruvian knitwear exports rose can be entirely a programme of cotton sweatshirts for one brand, while the alpaca side sits flat or falls underneath it. The reverse is equally invisible. Anyone tracking this market through a country total is tracking the wrong series.

Shipment size says it more bluntly

Cardigans leave Peru in shipments of 14 garments, sweaters in 21, sweatshirts in 38.

A trade that moves in fourteens is a trade where a buyer can test a company cheaply. A trade that moves in thirty eights and upward is a trade where the buyer is committed before the first delivery arrives.

Those are different commercial relationships, and they are being averaged into one country statistic.

The supply base is smaller than the headline count

For a buyer sourcing alpaca the practical read is that the relevant supply base is far smaller than the headline count of companies suggests. Hundreds of companies ship under this code. Only a minority work the fibre at all, and that minority is where minimums, lead times and grade conversations actually live.

The same trap sits inside the company counts. A buyer reading a number in the hundreds hears a deep supply base. Most of those names have never touched alpaca and never will, because their machines, their yarn contracts and their clients were built for something else.

So the count that matters is the much smaller list of companies already shipping the garment being sourced, in the fibre being sourced, to somewhere comparable. That list is the one worth building.

What I could not resolve

The split between an artisanal lane and an industrial one is clear in shipment size and in fibre. The code does not tell you which companies straddle both, and some plainly do. Nothing in a shipping record marks a workshop as a workshop.

So the honest version of the number I wanted is a refusal. There is no single price for Peruvian knitwear.

The useful precision starts one level down, at the garment type and the fibre. That is where the two industries stop being averaged together.

The country total will keep moving for reasons that have nothing to do with the garment being sourced. It will keep sounding like news, and it will keep describing somebody else's business.

Common questions

What is the average price of Peruvian knitwear?

There is no useful single number. The code holds sweaters at $21.93, sweatshirts at $19.62 and cardigans at $42.73, and any average of them is set by the side carrying the volume.

How much of Peruvian knitwear is actually alpaca?

10.4% of the sweater volume and 0.08% of the sweatshirt volume. On the sweatshirt side the alpaca garments number in the low thousands.

Why can a rising export headline mean nothing for alpaca?

Because the increase can be entirely a cotton sweatshirt programme for one brand while the alpaca side sits flat or falls underneath it.

How many Peruvian companies really work alpaca?

A minority of the hundreds that ship under this code. Most were built for other machines, other yarn contracts and other clients.

What should a buyer track instead of the country total?

The garment type and the fibre, one level below the code, and the short list of companies already shipping both to a comparable market.