The Garment Manufacturing Process, Step by Step: From Tech Pack to Packed Carton

Nine, in this order: the brief and tech pack; pattern making and grading; fabric knitting, dyeing and finishing; a fit sample; a pre-production sample; cutting; sewing; finishing and decoration; then quality control, packing and shipping. A brand controls four moments in that sequence rather than the whole of it: signing off the tech pack, approving the lab dip, approving and sealing the pre-production sample, and accepting the inspection report. Everything else is the factory's to run. If a supplier asks you to approve nothing before bulk production starts, that is not flexibility, it is risk quietly transferred onto you, and it is the most common reason a first order arrives looking like something you did not order. On a knit order of a few hundred pieces, production normally runs about forty to fifty days from pre-production sample approval to ready-to-ship, with freight on top.

Fabric, almost always, and it surprises most founders who assume sewing is the long pole. Yarn has to be knitted into greige cloth, dyed to your approved colour and then finished, and each colour is its own production run measured in hundreds of kilos. On a typical forty to fifty day window that block is usually the largest single piece, with sewing second. The parts you can genuinely shorten sit before the clock starts: how quickly the tech pack is finalised, how fast you approve the lab dip, and how long the pre-production sample waits in somebody's inbox. Our launch date calculator counts back from your on-sale date and says plainly whether the plan is short. Booking fabric early, or holding cloth for a style you already know will repeat, is the one lever that genuinely shortens a second order rather than a first.

They answer different questions. A fit sample settles proportion and measurement, and is often made in whatever suitable fabric is on hand, because you are judging the block rather than the colour. You comment, the pattern is corrected, and occasionally that loop runs twice. A pre-production sample is made in your actual fabric, colour and trims, on the line that will make the bulk, and it is wash-tested so the measurements you sign off are the measurements after washing. When you approve it we seal it, and every piece in the run is measured against that sealed garment. Bulk does not start until that signature exists. Allow about ten days for each sample round, plus courier time in both directions if you want to handle the garment physically before deciding.

A marker is a map of every pattern piece nested as tightly as possible across the width of the fabric before cutting. Its efficiency, normally somewhere between the high seventies and high eighties as a percentage, decides how much cloth your order actually consumes. Since fabric is bought by the kilo and is usually the largest single line in a knit garment's cost, a few points of marker efficiency move your unit price more than most construction decisions. Size mix matters here too, because a run weighted towards larger sizes consumes more cloth per piece. Ask your factory for the marker efficiency and the consumption figure it booked against: a cutting room that made the marker can state both, and they belong in any quote you intend to compare properly.

Yes. Pre-arranged visits to the floor in Narayanganj are welcome, and for buyers who cannot travel we run a live video call from the line during a working shift rather than sending an edited film. That call is also the single most useful vetting question you can ask any supplier, because a trading company cannot arrange one at short notice and a factory can. Our address is Plot-A-132, Road No. 02, BSCIC Industrial Area, Panchabati, Narayanganj 1420, and the factory profile page carries the registration numbers you can check independently. Ask for the call during a working shift rather than at a convenient hour, and ask to see cutting, finishing and the packing bench as well as the sewing line, because those are the rooms a borrowed floor rarely includes.

One hundred and fifty pieces of each style in each colour, because below that the fixed work of booking and dyeing fabric, making the pattern and setting up the line stops making sense per garment. Sizes split freely inside each hundred and fifty, but colours cannot, because every colour needs its own lab dip, approved before hundreds of kilos of cloth are knitted and dyed. One style in three colours means three lab dips, three runs of cloth and four hundred and fifty pieces. A second style is its own hundred and fifty in each colour, even in a colour you already have. Pattern making and grading cost the same whether you order a hundred and fifty pieces or ten thousand, so a bigger run spreads that one-off work across more garments, and each new style still needs its own fit and pre-production sample before bulk. You do not need a finished tech pack; we can build it with you. Our MOQ calculator shows what different style and colour splits do to your total.

A brand normally approves four things during garment manufacturing: the tech pack, the lab dip for each colour, the pre-production sample and the final inspection report. The tech pack fixes measurements, fabric, trims and labels before a pattern is cut. The lab dip settles each colour on your fabric before the mill dyes it in bulk. The pre-production sample, made in your real fabric, colour and trims, is the one bulk cannot start without, and once signed it is sealed as the reference. The inspection report, measured against that sealed sample, comes before shipment. If you order printing or embroidery, you also approve a strike-off or sew-out before bulk decoration. Everything else, from pattern making to cutting and sewing, is the factory's to run. If a supplier asks you to approve nothing before bulk, that is not flexibility but risk quietly transferred to you. Collective Studio stops the line at each of these points until you approve.

Quality is checked during sewing as well as at the end, with a final random inspection against an AQL standard before the goods are packed and shipped. Checks on the line catch a fault while it affects a handful of pieces rather than the whole run. The final inspection measures finished garments against the sealed pre-production sample, looks at seams, prints, labels and shade, and produces a report the brand approves. Earlier checkpoints matter too: the lab dip is checked before bulk dyeing, strike-offs before bulk printing, and cut pieces are bundled by size and shade so a single garment is never sewn from two different fabric rolls. At Collective Studio the QC team checks during the line and again at the end, and on a 150-piece run we inspect every garment rather than a sample. Garments are then folded, poly-bagged and cartoned to your packing list before freight.