Frequently Asked Questions
Clothing brand design, development, and manufacturing
SERVICES
This is a bit of a “how long is a piece of string’ question, but we totally understand why it is asked, and so although we cannot give an accurate answer to this without knowing the details of your business, we have tried to give some guidelines below.
Some main factors that will determine the cost:
- Product type
- MOQ’s: Number of styles and colourways
- Complexity
- Fabrics and trims
Your first collection will be the most expensive because you are doing everything from scratch; however, many of these jobs are not ongoing. Once your branding material, tech packs, patterns, and fabric etc are established, this can be re-purposed saving time and money moving forward.
Overall cost to operate the business such as website and marketing needs to be accounted for as an ongoing overall business expense, these are not tied up in one collection alone.
Example for a small start-up collection of 5 ‘ready to wear styles’ in 2 colourways, MOQ 100 /pc/style = total order 1200pc
- DESIGN, BRANDING & SAMPLE DEVELOPMENT: AUD 12,000
- BULK PRODUCTION & IMPORT: USD 25,000
See more details about costs here: The true cost to start a fashion label in Australia
We assist with pricing and budgeting through the Fashion Framework services to help ensure our clients have made carefully calculated decisions.
We are all about making calculated decisions, we do, however, need sufficient information in order to provide production prices.
To calculate production prices, there is quite a lot involved, and we don’t want to give the wrong price. What we need is:
- Tech packs
- Intended PO (purchase order)
What impacts the production prices:
- Your design and the machinery required
- Fabrics: What fabric type, GSM and treatments? What is the MOQ from the fabric supplier, what is the current price on the fabric (can fluctuate). Or are we custom-milling your fabric?
- Measurements and sizes: What is the fabric consumption after we have calculated how to lay the patterns on the fabric.
- Colours: Are we sourcing stock fabric colours, or are we custom dyeing?
- Prints: Are we sourcing stock prints, or are we designing and producing custom prints, and what print method?
- QTY per style/colour (the higher the QTY the lower the prices)
- Trims and finishings and the current prices
- Branding and packaging
- Factory and country (this is determined once we know all of the above)
- Certification requirements (audits for certifications are expensive)
Learn more about:
How to REQUEST PRODUCT QUOTATIONS FROM CLOTHING MANUFACTURERS
What’s included in TECH PACKS and how to get them made
In-house appointments are welcome, but everything we offer can be done online through video conference.
No you don’t. We can develop your tech packs and finalise your quotations without a brand name. But we suggest finalising this important detail ASAP, as you will need to ensure you can secure the Trademark, IP, domain and socials, prior to setting up your branding artwork; garment labels, swing tags etc. PS: registration of a Trademark can take 7 months before it is approved.
Your branding and packing instructions will need to be included in your tech pack before you go to bulk production.
We can take care of all your branding; Whether that is designing your logo, or adding the logo you already have to a design layout for neck labels, swing tickets, care labels and packaging and setting up your files ready for production as well as the physical production. It can save you significant time and cost getting your branding design done with the same designer that produces your tech packs; our designers specialise in graphic design for textiles and we offer highly competitive prices accommodating for start-ups on tight budgets.
Explore DESIGN SERVICES
Every project is as individual as you are, it depends on so many factors, including yourself. In our experience, start-up brands generally take 9-12 months to convert their ideas into real products. The timeline for a new project is always more unpredictable, we find that most new brands will go through about 2-3 sample rounds before approving them for bulk production.
Lead times for sample and production vary depending on a number of factors such as product type, fabrics and supply availabilities, complexity, colours/prints, QTY and factory.
Once we have a better idea of your range plan, we will be able to provide you with an estimate for sample + bulk lead times.
On average it usually takes 4 weeks for sampling and 45 days for bulk production. Some of our factories can do samples in 2 weeks and bulk production in 15-25 days.
Learn more about:
SAMPLE TYPES & TIMELINES EXPLAINED
If you have industry experience and don’t need the full service where one of our designers and project manufacturers guides you through every step, then the manufacturing platform is for you. You will communicate directly with the factory and handle all processes by yourself, however, you can still book any of our services on a need basis. You can see more info on how that works here: MANUFACTURING PLATFORM
Design
Having quality clothing tech packs is the first and most important step toward streamlining your sample development, bulk production and quality control process.
Tech packs will help you make calculated decisions before making physical samples; saving you time, money and wastage.
Tech packs are also the most important protection you have from having incorrectly made products.
WHAT TECH PACKS ARE USED FOR
Calculating production prices
Sample development and reporting
Bulk production
Quality control
Learn more about: TECH PACKS
Get a quote for: TECH PACKS
Yes you sure can, but some important facts to consider first is:
It is important to have high quality tech packs and fit reports in order to avoid issues in sampling and bulk production. If your tech packs do not include accurate and sufficient information, you are likely to end up with wrongly made products, having to either fix or re-do the tech packs and products, which all results to lost time and money.
If you submit your own tech packs and want our team to look over them to ensure they are correct, the time it will take to check all measurement and instructions may take almost the same time as doing it from scratch, so you are better of getting them done right the first time around.
Though tech packs may seem expensive, they should actually save you time, money and fabric wastage, so this is where it’s important you invest in quality.
We have an option to purchase a tech pack template here: TECH PACK TEMPLATE. This template is a simplified version to what we use internally, however, if you have the industry experience and confidence to create your own, this template will prompt you to insert the required information.
Learn more about: TECH PACKS
Get a quote for: TECH PACKS
We can take care of all your branding;. Whether that is designing your logo, or adding the logo you already have to a design layout for neck labels, swing tickets, care labels and packaging and setting up your files ready for production as well as the physical production. It can save you significant time and cost getting your branding design done with the same designer that produces your tech packs; our designers specialise in graphic design for textiles and we offer highly competitive prices accommodating for start-ups on tight budgets.
Get a quote: BRANDING DESIGN
We sure can! We have some highly talented artists on our team that can create any kind of custom print and digital artwork ready for production. This includes hand-painted prints, surface prints , embroidery, laser cutting, applique and more. If you need print artworks, please see our CUSTOM PRINT DESIGN Services. And PRINT SHOP for ready-made print files.
Manufacturing
Our MOQ (minimum order quantity) starts at 25 pieces per style/colour (Bali), however, most of our factories have a MOQ of 100/style/colour (China / Vietnam / India). Factories will rarely accept a Total order less than 300 units across all styles and colours, in some cases (depending on product type), a total order of 500 is required.
The MOQ requirement is determined by many factors such as the product type, what machinery is needed and the efficiency in doing small batch orders. Suppliers, printers and dye houses may also have MOQ’s requirements for certain fabrics and dye or print methods.
There are some significant price and lead time differences between countries to weigh up. See more here: DEVELOPMENT & PRODUCTION LEAD TIMES
MOQ’s will affect your price due to:
- Up-charges from Fabric suppliers when small amounts are ordered.
- Production Efficiency: The process of production is more efficient when making multiples of the same style using the same material as opposed to changing style
and fabrics because the process of changing machine set-up and fabrics can be time-consuming. - The development and sampling process is costly and time-consuming for the manufacturer, they rely on bulk orders to compensate it, therefore, the larger the order, the more profitable for them, hence the prices can be reduced.
CUSTOM DYE FABRICS
It depends on the country, factory and fabric. Sometimes it is 300m, and sometimes it is 800m, but with silk or silk blend, we can do any quantity. Keep in mind that there is often an upcharge on small batch orders, usually around USD180.
CUSTOM MILLING FABRIC
Benefits of custom milling fabric
- Quality control (stock fabric is out of your control)
- The price is lower (at least 10% less)
- Ensure availability (and if left-overs are stored with the factory, you will have a far faster production time for re-orders)
Lead time: 1 month
MOQ 800m per colour for most fabrics (China)
Lead times for sample and production vary depending on a number of factors such as product type, fabrics and supply availabilities, complexity, colours/prints, QTY’s and factory.
Once we have a better idea of your range plan, we will be able to provide you with an estimate for sample + bulk lead times.
On average it usually takes 4 weeks for sampling, and 45 days for bulk production. Some of our factories can do samples in 2 weeks and bulk production in 15-25 days.
Learn more about:
SAMPLE TYPES & TIMELINES EXPLAINED
Fabric sourcing is a service that is offered in conjunction with creating tech packs and / or production with our factories.
We have a large library of fabric swathes in our office that we use for the R’N’D process, and a global network for production.
The fabric sourcing works in 2 stages:
1. Tech packs stage: when our design team do the tech packs, we use our fabric library in-office to specify the fabric for the tech packs (for quotation purposes) BOOK APPOINTMENT
2. Sample stage: Once we know which factory you are going to produce with, the factory will source the fabric with their suppliers to match our description in the tech packs. We only know which factory you are going to work with after you have approved a production price quotation. We will send fabric swatches for approval once soured by the chosen factory.
Learn how to: REQUEST PRICE QUOTATION FROM GARMENT MANUFACTURERS
Yes we do! We believe in transparency in the production process. As a brand you should be aware of where your product is being made and have the opportunity to visit the factory. Once you have accepted a production quote and are ready to start sampling your products, we provide you with all factory details as well as a Manufacturing Agreement.
+ We will not recommend a factory to a client if we do not think they can successfully create the product as required.
+ We have long-standing trusting relationships, and a large volume of business, so with us, you are not alone or considered a small fish in the ocean.
+ Before we set a client up with a factory, we provide a product quotation, so that they can make calculated decisions before committing to development and production.
+ We provide certifications and regularly check audit reports.
Learn more about our FACTORIES
Investing in sample development for a new client is a risk for the factory especially when taking on a small or a start-up business that doesn’t guarantee a bulk order big enough to recoup the development cost. The sample charges that our clients pay don’t come close to covering the cost of running the sample rooms and the processes that happen in the development stage. Therefore, our factories do not offer ‘sample only services’ without the intention, and ‘high likeliness of the client placing a bulk order.
Our clients are never obliged to place a bulk order until they have approved a perfect sample, and paid a production deposit, but we need to feel confident that the investment will be worthwhile, not only for the factory’s sake, but also our clients.
Our process is to determine the best-suited factory before investing in the sample process. We do that by quoting the production prices based on tech packs. This will save time, cost and wastage of materials. Learn more about REQUEST PRODUCTION QUOTATIONS
Learn more about SAMPLE TYPES, COSTS & TIMELINES EXPLAINED
