Buyers arrive with a sewing question and leave with a fabric problem. The stitching on a garment is the most commoditised operation in the supply chain — thousands of factories do it competently. What separates a good order from a bad one is the cloth: its weight, its composition, its dye lot, and whether the roll that made your sample is the roll that makes your production.
Why the fabric sets your minimum order, not the factory
This is the single most misunderstood thing in garment sourcing. A sewing unit will often take a small run happily. The mill that weaves or knits your cloth will not. Mills quote in rolls and dye baths, and a dye bath has a floor — typically a few hundred kilos of yarn or fabric per colour.
So when a factory tells you the minimum is 500 pieces per colourway, it is usually relaying the mill's constraint, not inventing one. The routes around it are real but each costs something: buy stock fabric the mill already has, accept a colour the mill is already running, pay a surcharge for a short dye lot, or consolidate colours so one bath serves several styles.
If your quantity is small, say so at the first message. It changes which suppliers are worth approaching, and it is far cheaper to hear "not with this fabric" in week one than in week six.
Where garment orders actually fail
The production fabric is not the sample fabric. The sample was cut from a hand loom sample or a leftover roll. Production runs on a new lot with a different hand feel, a different weight and a slightly different shade. Signing off a sample without recording the fabric's specification — composition, GSM, construction, finish — leaves you nothing to hold anyone to.
Dye lot variation. Two rolls dyed in different baths will not match exactly. Across a large order that is normal and manageable; across garments that will hang next to each other on a rail it is a returns problem. Continuity of colour is something you specify and inspect, not something you assume.
Shrinkage after washing. A cotton garment that fits at inspection and shrinks two sizes on the customer's first wash is a quality failure that no visual inspection catches. Wash testing to an agreed standard belongs in the specification.
Grading across markets. A size medium is not a fixed dimension. If you are selling into more than one region, the size chart and the grading rules have to be part of the tech pack, not left to the factory's default block.
Labelling is a legal requirement, not a finishing detail
Every garment needs permanent labelling, and what it must say depends on where you sell it — not on where it was made. Getting this wrong means relabelling in a bonded warehouse at your expense, or a refused entry.
| Requirement | United States | European Union | United Kingdom |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fibre composition | Required, by generic name and percentage | Required, harmonised fibre names, percentage by weight | Required, mirrors the EU rules |
| Country of origin | Required | Not mandatory EU-wide for textiles | Not mandatory |
| Care instructions | Required | Not mandatory, universally expected commercially | Not mandatory, universally expected |
| Responsible party | Manufacturer or dealer identity required | Importer details required on the product or packaging | Importer details required |
| Language | English | Official language(s) of the market sold in | English |
Children's clothing adds a layer: sleepwear sold in the United States is subject to flammability requirements, and drawstrings in the neck and waist areas of children's upper garments are a recognised strangulation hazard with an established standard behind them.
Cotton traceability
If you import cotton products into the United States, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act creates a rebuttable presumption that goods made wholly or in part in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or by certain listed entities, are made with forced labour and are therefore barred from entry. The burden of rebutting that presumption sits with the importer, and it is discharged with documentation tracing the cotton back through spinning and ginning to the farm.
In practice this means the question to ask a supplier is not "is this compliant" but "can you produce the traceability documentation for the yarn". Many can. Some cannot, and it is better to know in week one. This is a customs and documentation matter, and we treat it as one.
What we do on a garment order
Establish the fabric specification before the price conversation, find mills and sewing units that match the actual quantity rather than the one you wish you had, record the approved sample against a written tech pack, check the production fabric against the approved lot, verify labelling against the destination market before the goods are packed, and inspect for measurement and wash performance rather than appearance alone. Our fee is stated separately from the factory invoice.
