How to Start a Clothing Brand With Just 150 Pieces

Yes, and it is now a realistic route rather than a compromise. A number of factories run from 150 pieces per style and colour, ours included, which lets you launch a tight range, watch what actually sells, and put your money behind winners rather than guesses. The arithmetic that matters is per colourway: 150 pieces of one tee in one colour is 150 units, but the same tee in three colours is 450, because each colour is a separate fabric batch with its own dye lot. Sizes stay flexible within each 150. The practical advice for a first run is to go narrow and deep enough to learn something — two or three styles at the minimum usually teaches you more than the same number of units of a single design, because you find out which product your customer returns for.

Because the cost of getting a style ready to sew barely changes with the size of the order. A pattern has to be made and graded across the size range, cutting has to be set up and a sewing line changed over, and that work costs much the same for 50 pieces as for 5,000. Spread across a long run it nearly vanishes from the unit price; on a short one it dominates. Fabric sets a second floor. Every colour needs its own fabric batch and dye lot, and mills set their own minimums per colour, so each extra colourway restarts the count. A factory organised around long runs has no reason to absorb any of that. One built for new brands plans for it, sharing setup across several small orders or accepting a thinner margin. When you compare suppliers, ask for the minimum per style and per colour, not the headline figure.

Enough to learn something, and not so much that a wrong guess is unrecoverable — usually 150 to 300 pieces per style for a first run. The more useful question is how to spread it. Testing three styles at 150 pieces each generally teaches you more than 450 of one design, because you discover which product your audience actually wants rather than only whether they liked the single option you offered. Favour a style that sells year-round over a strongly seasonal piece, since slow-moving seasonal stock locks up cash exactly when you need it to restock. And hold money back for a reorder: running out of your bestseller three weeks after launch with nothing to restock is a more common way for a new brand to stall than failing to sell at all.

Yes, if you promise a date you can keep. Work it out from our stages: about 10 days for sampling, 40 to 50 days of production once you approve the sample, then freight, which by air is about 5 to 7 days to the US and UK, 5 to 8 to Europe and 6 to 8 to Canada. Open pre-orders after sample approval, once the clock has started and you know exactly what you are selling, and put a shipping window on the product page. In the US, the FTC's Mail, Internet or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule says that if you state no time, you need a reasonable basis to expect to ship within 30 days, and if you run late you must ask the buyer to accept the delay and refund promptly if they do not. In the UK, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 sets a 30-day limit unless another delivery period was agreed. Leave a buffer for customs.

Enough to fit the people you sell to, and few enough that the end sizes still mean something. On the adult unisex curve in the table above, XS gets only 8 pieces, so if your customers rarely buy it, running S to XXL moves those pieces to sizes that sell: the same curve without XS gives 24 in S, 47 each in M and L, and 16 each in XL and XXL. Every size you add takes pieces from the others, so if you want a 3XL, decide which size gives some up. Leaving out a size you are unsure about is fine for a first run, and you can add it on the reorder, since every size is graded from the same base pattern. If you already sell through print on demand or a market stall, use those size sales rather than a generic curve. Tell us your split and we cut to it.

Some suppliers will make 100 pieces or fewer, but ask whether they cut and sew to your own pattern or print onto ready-made blanks, because those are very different products. Collective Studio's minimum is 150 pieces per style and per colour, and it does not drop for a first order, because the pattern, the cutting set-up and the mill's dye lot behind each colour have to be shared across enough pieces. If you planned 100, there are three honest options. Make 150 of one style in one colour and use the extra 50 for photography, press and wholesale samples, or to cover the gap while a reorder is made. Keep to one colour, since two colours of 75 would count as two minimums. Or test the design on print-on-demand first, which has no minimum, and move it into a cut-and-sew run once it has proved that it sells.

No, at Collective Studio each colour needs its own 150 pieces, so one style in two colours is a 300-piece order, not 150. The reason is the fabric: every colour is cut from its own dyed fabric lot, and that lot has to be shared across enough garments to work as production rather than sampling. Sizes work differently. There is no minimum per size, so you can split each 150 across XS to XXL however your customers buy, using your own sales data or a starting curve such as 8 XS, 22 S, 45 M, 45 L, 15 XL and 15 XXL for an adult unisex range. If you want to test several colours, a sensible route is to make your strongest colour as the first run and keep the others on print-on-demand until the first one proves itself in stock. Our MOQ calculator works out the totals and a size split for any mix of styles and colours.

A first run of 150 pieces from Collective Studio takes about 70 days from order to your door by air. That is about 10 days for a sample round, then 40 to 50 days of production after you approve the sample, then freight: about 5 to 7 days by air to the US or UK, 5 to 8 to Europe and 6 to 8 to Canada. Sea freight adds about a month. A small quantity does not shorten the timeline much, because fabric booking, dyeing, cutting and sewing follow the same sequence whether the run is 150 pieces or several hundred. The stage you control most is sampling: each extra revision round adds about another 10 days, so a clear brief and one consolidated set of corrections keep the count down. If your launch date is fixed, plan backwards from it with a buffer, and use our launch date calculator to count back through each stage.