Approaching Local Clothing Businesses (Product Photography)

I have contact details of a dozen or so small, local clothing businesses in my city within the United Kingdom. I have already emailed these businesses to offer my photography services to them. I have selected these businesses because their website/online store's photos are not very professional for example, product photos are shot in poor lighting, badly cropped, low resolution, blurry, things like that.

I own a D810 DSLR with 3 external flashes. I have a light tent and a HiLite background which I can set up in my home if needed. I've received replies stating they are not in the position/have the budget to hire a photographer at the moment but they will contact me if things change. One has gotten back to me saying he may be interested in my services. I would like advice from photographers here who have worked with clothing stores. Is it standard practice to walk away with store products in order to photograph them? Many of these stores are small in size and it would not be possible to photograph products in store while achieving good results. I would ideally like to take products home with me, photograph them against my Hilite background and then return them to the owner. I would likely need to buy a mannequin or borrow one from the owner if a model is not used. Is this unreasonable in the point of view of the owner? Basically, I don't want to come across as if I am asking to take products home with me in order to steal. How do I present trust? Am I making sense here? I am not exactly sure what I am asking, I would just like some advice.

I have photographed jewellery and muslim clothing before. Jewellery was shot in the stores basement using a light tent. The muslim clothing was done in the clients home against a white backdrop she borrowed from a friend.

I have done a few magazine product shoots for wedding cakes, bouquets etc... from what I can see, the way the magazine publisher gets around it is

1) Supplier delivers the products.
2) They can stay if they want to.
3) If they don't want to stay, parties sign a document stating what goods have been delivered / received.
4) When they come to pick up the items, they sign to say all good are being collected.

Hope that helps.

Thanks @kevy73 that makes sense. What should I be charging? Should it be per day? per hour? or per item? I will be editing the photos, should this time be absorbed into my pricing? or should I be charging extra? For example, if I am charging £40 per hour for photographing, should I be charging per hour for my editing time? How exactly does the client trust how many hours I am taking editing? I could easily charge 5 hours editing time but in reality, I only spent 2 hours. Do you see what I mean?

Yeah hard to know how best to quote. For weddings, people book me to 6,8,10 or 12 hours. How long I spend meeting with them beforehand, processing, burning their images, uploading etc doesn't come into it. I have factored all that into my pricing structure. I have also quoted on things like this on a piecemeal basis... ie - 40 items at $5.00 each. Go with what you feel comfortable with.

I would factor into your price everything you will be doing rather than itemising ($2.50 / item to shoot, $1.5 to process, $0.50 to burn images on a disk etc)... otherwise they will think they can pick and choose what they want.

You are providing a service, quote should be for the entire service.

Hourly rate can work for this scenario - and you just need to be as accurate as possible if quoting like this. If the client is happy to pay the 5 hr price and it only takes you 2, awesome! You go! But be careful of it being the other way. Thinking it will only be a 2 hr job but in reality it takes you 5.

I will try to factor into the price the entire task but once I know what I am photographing and how many items etc and I quote an hourly rate, I don't really know how many hours I need to edit the photos. From the clients point of view, how does he know how many hours I spend retouching? He has no choice but trust my word and hope I am being honest. This is why I am hesitant about charging per hour and I am thinking of charging per item, that way I can bundle in the retouching time in the item price. I have to think about it I guess, but what about things like travel cost? cost of hiring a model (if one is used), is it realistic to expect the client to pay these charges? or the photographer?

I would go piecemeal for this type of work. ie 40 garments @ $X per garment.

Thanks @kevy73 but if anyone here could give me some answers on some of my other questions such as if a model is paid for, who actually pays for the model? Should the photographer or the store? Same for travelling costs