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Choosing your manufacturer

February 16, 2025 - February 16, 2025   


We see designers every week who tell us how difficult it is for them to get their designs made. There’s so much to think about…the cost of the fabric, knowing how to find the manufacturer in the first place, how long to allow for production, concerns about quality…

Sound familiar?

However, when you do find your manufacturer you will need to be able to tell them what fabrics you plan to use, and how many you are looking to produce of each design in your first run. These two factors will have a big impact on finding a company you work with: some factories specialise in working with leather or denim, for instance, which demands specific machinery, while many of the bigger manufacturers won’t want to know if your order quantities per design are going to be smaller than 500, 200 or even 50 in some instances. You will always find someone to make up what you want, but it can be a matter of wading through many other companies first.

Preparation

The first thing we tell people to do is put themselves in the position of the manufacturer or CMT (cut, make and trim) unit. If you were going to make quality items for a designer, you would need to know everything there is to know about that product. It is no good to present somebody with a sketch. The CMT will have the skill and experience to make the item to your specifications, but you need to make these specifications clear! On top of a sketch, you will need to supply:

A professional Pattern

If you are not confident of creating this yourself, there are many freelance pattern-cutters who will. This is also a service that the Fashion Studio based at Fashion Enter’s North London Factory can provide.

Fabrics

With a few rare exceptions, you will need to supply all fabric to your production unit. Usually if you are uncertain whether certain fabrics will work with a particular design, your production unit will be happy to advise you during an initial meeting or at sampling stage.

Trims.

You must also supply all zips, ribbons, beads or any other accessories for the garment, and the pattern and sketch should outline clearly how these are to be positioned.

Samples

Often even if you have your own sample, a production unit will want to produce their own sample before they can give you an accurate quote per unit, so they are able to work out precisely how much fabric is used per item, how long it takes to cut the fabric and how long the machining and pressing takes. Sampling can be expensive, and naturally costs more per unit than a larger run of a design would do, but please remember that a manufacturer will barely make a profit from a sample. They are investing their time in the hope that you will come to them with bigger orders, so it is to your benefit to work with them closely and get the best from your sample first time.

Deadlines

At the research stage it is important to visit a few factories or CMT units in person to see examples of their work, find out the way the company likes to work and how their workload is. If these units have a flaw it is often poor time planning. Because their workload fluctuates so much – they are rushed off their feet with everyone wanting garments for the seasonal shows, and then may be quiet again for weeks or even months – it is not uncommon for smaller orders to slip. You need to build an open relationship with a manufacturer, and agree deadlines, prices and quality standards clearly, ideally confirming these in writing, so there are no quibbles on either side down the line.

Payment

Finally, it is important to know that most CMT units will expect to be paid within 7 days of the work being done. This is a traditional practice based on the fact that most of the machinists are paid in this way. It is not fair to let a company make your samples and then explain you cannot pay them until the orders come in – your business planning needs to take care of all of these initial costs and cash flow issues.

There is a lot to think about and this just covers some of the first things to research and bear in mind.

 




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