Entrepreneurship and Career Skills
Overview
Entrepreneurship and career skills test whether you can turn a craft skill into a viable micro-enterprise and identify realistic apparel-sector roles.
Business basics
Start with a market survey: customer, price, competition, season and channel. Prepare a cost sheet covering fabric, trims, labour, overhead, wastage and packaging. Price with a stated margin; markup on cost is not the same as margin on selling price. Calculate break-even: fixed costs ÷ contribution per unit. Register the enterprise appropriately, keep records, and use correct care and size labelling. Careers include pattern maker, sample tailor, quality checker, merchandiser, embroidery artisan, home-furnishing entrepreneur and retail assistant.
Worked example
A tote bag uses 1 m fabric at ₹80, lining ₹20, thread and interfacing ₹10, labour ₹40 and overhead ₹10: total ₹160. Add a 20% margin on cost: 160 × 1.20 = ₹192 selling price. Treating the ₹160 as variable cost and fixed costs as ₹3,200, contribution is ₹192 − ₹160 = ₹32, so break-even is 100 bags. Reasoning: the margin is calculated on total cost, and fixed costs are recovered after variable costs. Quoting ₹160 leaves no profit.
Traps
Underpricing, omitting wastage or overhead, confusing markup with margin, ignoring GST/registration thresholds, and promising delivery without capacity planning cost marks. A business plan without numbers is not a plan.