This is what I was referring to earlier in the thread. Most of the manufacturers seem to say the soft goods are an add to the products compared to sculpted parts.
It depends what your comparing it to. If you add it to an already finished sculpt, it's an added cost. Doesn't matter if it's fabric or sculpted. I tried to explain what I mean but it's not easy to do. If you add a fabric part to something it adds cost. But if you add another sculpted part it adds cost as well. With fabric or cut and sew materials a large part of the cost is man hours and time. With sculpted it's tooling.
And of course if they add fabric they will say it makes it more expensive to produce. Just like diecast equals quality or expense. But it doesn't actually cost more to make. (If you have to buy new machines to make diecast or switch to or add a new vendor then it costs more, but not becuase it's better but becuase it's different). If the parts are sculpted and require new tooling the sculpted would cost more. Like say if skeletor had a leather croctch flap thing, or a sculpted part that is to be molded seperate. The plastic part would cost more to produce, generally, then the leather. (Again, hard to generalize as it would depend on many factors). But any added feature adds cost. Cloth, metal, plastic.
My initial point at the start of this is that just becuase an item is sculpted does not make it "cheaper". Nor does cut and sew make it higher quality or cost.
For example-lets use hot toys human figures. Most are reused bodies with cut and sew items and one new sculpted piece, the head. Versus say iron man or thanos or Ultron or griot where it's a fully sculpted new piece. The cost to produce the fully sculpted figures is much higher then the ones with cut and sew.
But there's so much that goes into it that it's hard to generalize. Like is the prt sculpted into a main body, how many pieces, how does it effect paint ect. And then with fabric stuff it's about material, complexity of the pattern and details, do you have in house access to man power or does it need to be outsourced to a different place then you do your injection molding ect.
But a sculpted item vs a cut/sew item the cost is "usually" higher for sculpted. If you then add fabric items that's an added cost, but does not mean fabric costs more. Just that you add a cost. If they added a second head that's sculpted, it adds cost.
Again, all I was saying in the start of this was that just becuase an item does or does not have cut/sew or fabric or diecast or whatever does not mean it was cheaper to produce. Nor does having those things indicate quality. Mego has lots of fabric and little sculptural details and is very low quality compared to 3zero or hot toys.