The document, defined.
A tech pack, short for technical package, is the engineering document for a garment: everything a factory needs to cut, sew, and finish your design without calling you to ask what you meant. A sketch communicates intent. A tech pack specifies construction. The distinction sounds academic until the first sample arrives wrong, at which point the tech pack becomes the most important document you own, because it is the contract that decides whether the factory owes you a remake. If the sample deviates from the pack, the maker fixes it at their cost. If the pack never specified the thing you cared about, the argument is over before it starts.
In working practice, a production-ready tech pack runs about twenty pages per style. It is also a living document: every fit session and every approved adjustment gets recorded back into it, so that by the time production begins, the pack and the signed sample describe exactly the same garment.
The anatomy, page by page.
Templates vary between studios, but every serious tech pack answers the same seven questions in roughly the same order. If a document is missing one of these sections, a factory will either guess or call you; both cost you time.
Cover and style summary.
Style name and number, season, category, size range, sample size, date, and revision number. The revision number matters more than it looks: factories build from the newest pack, and disputes are settled by it.
Technical flats.
Flat line drawings of the garment, front and back, drawn to proportion with callouts pointing at every construction detail: topstitching, pockets, plackets, vents, hardware. Not fashion illustration; engineering drawing.
Measurement spec.
A table of points of measure: chest, waist, sleeve, body length, and dozens more, each with a target value and a tolerance, plus how to take the measurement. Tolerances are what make the spec enforceable.
Bill of materials.
Every component in the garment: shell fabric with composition and weight, lining, interfacing, thread, zippers, buttons, labels, hangtags, with per-unit consumption. The BOM is where a garment's true cost lives.
Construction callouts.
Seam and stitch types, stitches per inch, seam allowances, hem depths, and finish notes for every join in the garment. This page is the difference between a garment that survives washing and one that doesn't.
Grading rules.
How each point of measure changes from size to size. Grade rules turn one approved sample into a full size range without re-fitting every size from scratch.
Colorways and artwork.
Each color version of the style with color references, print and embroidery files at scale, placement measurements, plus label and care instructions and how the finished piece is folded and packed.
Do you need one to manufacture clothing?
The honest answer depends on which door you knock on. A production-only factory, the kind that quotes cut-and-sew from your documents, needs a finished tech pack at the door; without one there is nothing to quote, and anyone who quotes anyway is guessing with your money. A full-service atelier does not require one, because drafting the pack is part of the service: you arrive with sketches, reference photographs, or a clear paragraph, and the technical layer is built with you.
That is how it works here. The design engagement, from $2,500 per style, turns your references into a working pattern and a complete tech pack of about twenty pages, with a costed bill of materials, and the finished document belongs to you, whether you produce with us or take it anywhere else. Already have a pack you trust? It gets reviewed for production-readiness and you skip the design fee entirely. Either way, no factory should ever hold your tech pack hostage; if yours does, that is the loudest warning it will ever give you. If you are earlier than all of this, start with our guide on how to produce your first fashion collection and come back to the paperwork when the capsule is scoped.
A tech pack is
- The contract a sample is judged against
- The measuring stick for production quality control
- A portable asset you own, usable at any factory
- A living document, updated after every fit session
A tech pack is not
- A mood board or a lookbook page
- A sketch with a few arrows on it
- A one-time PDF that never gets revised
- The factory's property, whoever drafted it
The mistakes that stall first samples.
No tolerances.
A chest measurement of 52cm with no tolerance makes every sample technically wrong. Garments are sewn by humans; specify the acceptable range and disputes disappear.
Prose instead of callouts.
"Make the hem nice and clean" is a wish. "2cm blind hem, single needle" is an instruction. Factories build instructions.
Naming a brand's fabric instead of specifying one.
"Like the cloth in this designer coat" is a starting point for sourcing, not a spec. Composition, weight, and hand are what a mill can actually match.
Missing grade rules.
An approved sample in one size with no grading logic means every other size is improvised. That is how a run fits nobody but the fit model.
Artwork at the wrong scale.
Prints and embroidery files must arrive at finished-garment scale and full resolution, with placement measured from a seam, not eyeballed from a photo.
Never updating the pack.
If fit-session changes live only in an email thread, production will follow the outdated document. Every approved adjustment belongs back in the pack, with a new revision number.
Over-specifying.
Locking every construction choice before the first sample leaves no room for the bench to improve your garment. Specify what you must; stay open where a maker's judgment is better than your guess.