Your First Production Run: From Tech Pack to 300 Finished Pieces

A new brand can start production with either a tech pack or a physical reference garment. Whichever you start from, the path to 300 finished pieces is the same: the factory reviews what you send, makes a sample, you approve it, and bulk production is made and inspected against that approved sample. Many first runs that go wrong do so before cutting starts, through a missing size chart, a colour agreed on screen or label artwork that arrives late. This guide goes through each stage in order and shows how the minimum shapes a first range.

What to have ready before you contact a manufacturer

Have the garment, the fabric, the sizes, the artwork, the labels and the quantities defined before you ask for a quotation. None of it has to be perfect, but every gap you leave open is a decision the factory has to guess or ask about, and each guess can cost a sampling round.

What a complete tech pack contains, and how to start without one, is covered in the tech pack guide. If a garment you already sell or like is the starting point, the method and its limits are set out in manufacturing from a reference garment. For the size chart, the size chart for production page shows which measurements a factory needs, and artwork files for decoration lists the file formats that avoid redrawing.

Stage 1: specification review and quotation

The first thing a factory does with your brief is check whether the garment can be produced as described. At Voyager Textile every incoming specification is reviewed for manufacturability before quotation, and missing or unclear points are raised in the reply rather than assumed. Expect questions about fabric weight, seam types, trim sources and label content. Answering them now is faster than correcting a sample later.

The quotation is only as accurate as the brief behind it. A quote based on an assumed fabric or a missing size range will change once those facts are known. What a request for quotation should contain is set out in the RFQ guide, and the cost structure behind a quote in custom clothing manufacturing cost.

Stage 2: the sample

The sample turns your specification into a physical garment, and at Voyager Textile it takes 5-7 business days. The pattern is made from your size chart or taken from the reference garment, the fabric is cut and the garment is sewn with the construction and decoration you specified. A sample in the final fabric and colour tells you much more than one in a substitute, so if fabric development is still running, agree which points the first sample is meant to prove.

Plan for one revision. A first sample that needs no changes is uncommon, and a second round that fixes fit and a few details is a normal part of the calendar rather than a failure. Each stage of sampling and what it proves is covered in the sampling guide, and why a sample costs more per piece than bulk in what a sample costs.

How to review a first sample

1. 1Measure the sample against your size chart at each point of measure and note every difference outside the tolerance.
2. 2Wear it, or put it on a fit model, and check the fit in movement, not only flat on a table.
3. 3Wash it as your care label will instruct, then measure again; shrinkage and twisting show up here, not in the unwashed sample. Laboratories test this with ISO 6330 washing and ISO 5077 dimensional change.
4. 4Check the decoration: position, size, colour and how it looks after washing.
5. 5Check every label for content and position.
6. 6Send all comments in one written list, with photographs and measurements, not as separate messages.

Stage 3: approval

Approval is the moment you confirm that bulk production should match this sample. It should be recorded: a named person, a date, the specification version and a sealed sample, with one copy kept by you and one by the factory. Bulk production is inspected against that garment, so a vague approval by message leaves nothing to measure against later.

If you have approved the fit in one size only, ask how the other sizes will be checked. Sizes are not scaled copies, and grading rules decide how each measurement moves from size to size; they are explained in pattern making and size grading. The last check before cutting is the pre-production sample, made in the bulk fabric and trims.

Stage 4: bulk production

Bulk production at Voyager Textile takes 4-5 weeks after sample approval, counted in calendar weeks. Fabric sourcing, custom colour development, any further sampling rounds and transport come on top of that. During bulk the fabric is checked and cut, the decoration is applied, the garments are sewn and pressed, and the goods are inspected and packed to your instructions.

Two things are worth agreeing before cutting starts. The first is the inspection standard: which defects count as major or minor, and which measurement tolerances apply, as described in the quality control guide. The second is the pack-out: folding, polybags, carton contents and marks, set out in the pack-out specification. How the whole calendar fits together, working back from your launch date, is in the lead time guide.

How the 300 minimum shapes a first range

The minimum at Voyager Textile is 300 pieces per colour and per style, and sizes can be split inside the 300. Colour is the limit because each colour is its own fabric dyeing; sizes are cut from the same fabric in the same lay, so they do not add to the minimum. A women's fit has its own pattern and normally counts as a separate style, confirmed at the quotation stage. Why the minimum sits where it does is explained in the MOQ guide.

Inside each 300, the size split should follow what you expect to sell, not an even spread. Ordering 60 of each size across five sizes usually leaves unsold pieces at both ends of the range. A curve weighted to the middle sizes is a more common starting point, adjusted to your own customers:

For many new brands, one style in one core colour, or two colours of one style, keeps the first run within 300 to 600 pieces and makes the test clear: one product, one fit, a real sell-through. Adding colours before the first product has sold multiplies the stock without adding much information. Whether a first run should be made to your own design at all, or started on blanks, is compared in custom apparel vs blanks.

What usually goes wrong in a first run, and how to prevent it

Many first-run problems come from decisions that were left open, not from sewing. The table lists the ones that recur and the step that prevents each.

After the first run

Keep the record of the first run: the approved sample, the specification version, the colour standard, the size split and any comments from inspection. A reorder is made from that record, and the more of it exists in writing, the closer the second run matches the first. The controls are set out in the reorder consistency guide.

What Voyager Textile makes for clothing brands, from streetwear and activewear to fashion and e-commerce labels, and how a brand works with the factory over time, is set out on the private label clothing page.