Sourcing Sewing Manufacturers
D2M specialist in the development of innovative textile products including sourcing the right cut, make and sew factory for manufacturing your sewn product.
Manufacturers of sewn products are often called CMT or cut, make and trim factories if they are based in the West. In the far east, where most textile manufacturing factories are based, they tend to be more specialist and so might be described as a bag manufacturer or a sport’s clothing manufacturer.
It is best really to find a recommendation for a supplier from someone who you know or someone else in the same industry sector. Sourcing manufacturers from cold is often a very long process that often tends to end in disaster.
Getting your product made in the UK by a small sewing factory might sound like a great idea. In our experience that is incredibly difficult for a consumer product where margins are tight. You also need to be aware that quite a few UK manufacturers will outsource to India or China your product anyway if the margins are low.
A tech pack is a document containing all the technical information about your product. It’s an essential document for both designers and the manufacturing team when producing new items, as it helps ensure that every little detail about what you are making, is communicated clearly to your factory.
If your product is not just a garment or fashion item then you will probably need something that is roughly similar to a tech pack but has more construction details and is known as a manufacturing specification. This might well include standards that the products has to comply with.
The terms are roughly interchangeable but either way you will need a document clearly detailed what is expected of the manufacturer before you can start the source the right supplier.
D2M’s textile development team are highly experienced in producing tech packs / manufacturing specifications.
Contact us to help with this if you need.
The next step is to get samples made by your sewing manufacturer. They might be able to provide costings before, but most would rather produce a sample first. First samples are unlikely to be in the right final fabric or colour but are more about proving the quality of the manufacturers stitching. In total it is likely that you will need 3 or more samples to get all the details right. We would then suggest meeting the manufacturer before commissioning.
Sometimes it’s best to run samples with multiple manufacturers particularly if timescales are tight for launch.
We’ve worked with a number of clients to bring innovative textile products to the market.
Do get in touch if you have a sewing project or any type of textile product, we’d love to hear about it! If you would like to carry on reading more about designing sewn products click here.
If you’ve got a project for a fabric product but don’t know how to go about developing it, contact us today and we can arrange a call to discuss it.
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