I've done something like that one 2 occasions.

A "Dance troupe" (turned out it was Madonna) and an AOH group both wanted to see the kilts before they commited thousands of dollars to a contract with us. I ended up talking them through the process to find out exactly what they were looking for. Then I took their credit card info and sent them one of my OWN kilts (washed and cleaned and pressed) for a refference. They KNEW that I was sending them one of my personal kilts. That gave them the option to inspect it and see what it'd look like after 50 washings. If they ended up not returning it, I get money for an old kilt. If they return it, we move forward with the deal. If they returned it and didn't like it, they would have been charged just the shipping costs.

Another thing we have done is swatches... in the past, we haven't given swatches of material, but we've changed our tune a bit thanks to Ron MacDonald. If you send us a SASE (self addressed Stamped Envelope) and the FEW (3 or so... NOT EVERYONE on our list) swatches that you want, we'll cut some and send them to you. I think it's a good compromise.