Why do patterns cost so much?

It takes approximately 60 people to produce a pattern. Starting with merchandisers who shop the market for the newest looks, to designers, patternmakers, dressmakers, instruction writers, and people to create the cutting layouts, yardage and notions requirements, not to mention the production, printing and marketing costs of creating the catalogues and magazines which sell the patterns, and the expense of shipping to the stores worldwide; manufacturing a pattern is a complicated process with many checkpoints along the way. Every year manufacturing costs go up. There are many costs that we have no control over, however we make every effort to keep our production costs down so that we can keep the cost of our patterns as low as possible.