A former Essence employee found Off-White's cost sheet showing T-shirts made for $4.65 and sold for $375. The massive markup revealed how branding and storytelling can matter far more than what a product actually costs to make.
What is the craziest markup you've ever seen on an item? When I was working at Essence in 2016, I was shipping out some Off-White products and I saw their costing sheet. Off-White t-shirt cost them $4.65, something like that, to produce. And they were turning around and retailing it at around, I think it was $375 at the time. So like literally like 100 times more than their cost. That was pretty shocking. I realized the power of a brand in that very moment. I realized that because Off-White had built such a name, people were buying these t-shirts nonstop. They were flying out of our warehouse, right? But I realized it didn't matter what their cost was. People didn't even care about the quality of the t-shirt, and the t-shirt was okay quality. It was a nice screen print. They really did a good job decorating it, nice hang tags, and people still bought it. So I guess that was just a lesson about how important branding is and storytelling. Doesn't really matter what you're selling, it matters how you're selling it.
