How to Find a Clothing Manufacturer for Startups​? My years of experience in clothing manufacturers have found that novice clothing brand sellers lack understanding of factories, and there are many difficulties in communication during the cooperation process. It is necessary for clothing businessmen to understand the factory. How can factories and businesses achieve a win-win situation?

1. The Operation Process of the Garment Factory

Your goal here is find clothing manufacturer that can produce your specific designs in the quantities that you desire at a reasonable price.  In fact, the factory is the most complicated link in the apparel supply chain. The factory needs a lot of sewing equipment and space, which will cost a lot of money.

1. Send your sketch or pictures to the project manager and communicate clearly the details of fabric, size, design, etc.
2. After confirming with you, the project manager will send your design to the pattern maker, and then purchase the fabric, make a pattern for the sewing staff finally make your design into life.
3. Take a photo and video of the finished sample for you to confirm. If you are not satisfied, we will modify it and return to process1
4. If you are satisfied with the sample, ship it to you, and then quote. After you confirm the order, send the quantity and size to the project manager, as well as custom logos
5. The documentary will arrange the purchase of bulk fabrics. The cutting department will uniformly cut it, and the sewing department will sew it, and the final department (cleaning, quality inspection, ironing, packaging, shipping)

If a garment factory does not have stable orders, it will face very heavy economic pressure. Because of the rent and so many workers and equipment. Therefore, the factory will do its best to make every order well, hoping to establish a good long-term cooperative relationship with the brand, and there will be more orders in the future.

2. How to Judge That a Clothing Manufacturer Is a Good Factory in Mind

1. Factory scale

First of all, I think that the scale of the factory cannot be used to judge a factory. Large factories are relatively complete in all aspects of the management system, and quality control is relatively better than small factories; but the disadvantage of large factories is that the management cost is too high for the number of people, and it is difficult to adapt to the current flexible production lines of multiple varieties and small batches. . Relatively speaking, the price is relatively high. This is why many companies have now started to build small factories.

When it comes to the scale of the garment factory now, it cannot be compared with before. In the 1990s, the factory had ten thousand employees, but now it’s not easy to find a garment factory with hundreds of people. And now many garment factories is a dozen people.

Factory automation is getting higher and higher, and the reduction in labor demand is another reason. At the same time, there are fewer and fewer large orders. Large factories are not suitable for the current small-volume order customization needs. Small factories are relatively more suitable for small orders. Moreover, compared with large factories, the management costs of small factories can be relatively better controlled, so the scale of factories is now shrinking.

For clothing production automation, currently, only suits and shirts can be realized. There are also many craftsmanships for suits, and it is difficult to automate mass production for fashion. Especially for high-end customized clothing, the degree of automation is even lower. In fact, for the current garment craftsmanship, the higher-end categories require more manual participation, and it is difficult for automated things to completely replace all crafts.

Therefore, when looking for a factory, you must: Find a factory of the corresponding scale according to your order size.

If the order quantity is small, but you are looking for a large-scale factory, even if the factory agrees to do it, it will not pay much attention to the order. However, if the order is relatively large, but a small-scale factory is found, the final delivery time is also a big problem. At the same time, we should not think that many processes are automated operations, so we bargain with the factory. In fact, as far as the current technology is concerned, the degree of automation of clothing is not very high, and the labor cost is still very high.

2. Customer group positioning

When finding a clothing manufacturer, it is best to find out which objects your intended factory serves. If the factory is mainly for OEM processing for big brands, then he may not be interested in orders for start-up brands.

The factories that have been dealing with their own brands for a long time will basically understand their needs. For example, our factory has cooperated with many brands. Basically, we only need customers to provide design drawings. We will be responsible for other things such as purchasing accessories, cutting, sewing, finishing to packaging and global delivery, so our customers only need to do a good job in sales.

First ask the main cooperative service partners of the clothing manufacturer, understand what categories they mainly do, and understand the grade and main style of the clothes produced by the factory, and find a cooperative factory that matches you.

3. The integrity of the boss

The integrity of the boss is also a key indicator to measure the quality of a factory. Clothing sellers must first review the integrity of their boss when looking for a factory. you can go directly to Google to search for comments from others, or check whether there are comments left by other customers on the website. And after the cooperation, observe whether the factory is responsible for the problems that arise, and actively find ways to solve the problems. In fact, a boss has problems with integrity, and the factory will not last long.

3. What Are the Things That Big Brands or Startup Brands Need to Pay Attention to When Looking for a Clothing Factory to Cooperate

1. MOQ

For businesses that are just starting out, the minimum order quantity is the most critical factor. Many factories with a certain scale have certain requirements for the minimum order quantity of a single item. Although many factories have implemented flexible small-batch production customization and do not have high requirements for a single item quantity, merchants should pay attention to the cost. After all, clothes need to face the market and are not worn by the business owner. If the unit price is too high due to a small batch, your product will be uncompetitive in the market.

2. Quality control

Our factory now produce samples according to the pictures, but generally we need to understand the designer’s intentions. Long-term customer models have a higher accuracy rate because we know the customer’s habits, but for new customers, the first model is difficult to be perfect, so designers need to provide as many size details as possible for reference.

After confirming the samples, the factory will perform quality control against the samples during mass production, and each piece needs to be checked.

3. Drop shipping

Some factories can also provide a drop shipping model. For example,  the buyer pays for the goods and prepays some freight. You can put the goods in our warehouse. After you have the order, give us the address information and we will ship it. This model is a very worry-free way for the brand so that letting the factory deliver the goods on behalf of the factory can also reduce the cost of stocking in the warehouse. But pay attention to the time limit, generally we require at most one year to sell out the goods

4. Payment period

When discussing cooperation with the factory, the payment of the order is also a key factor.

For general small brands, most of them pay a 30% deposit first and then start production, and pay 70% of the balance and shipping before shipment.

In terms of MOQ, quality follow-up, payment methods, etc., it is necessary to reach a win-win cooperation agreement in order to cooperate better.

4. The Impact of the Epidemic on Custom Clothing Manufacturer Industry

The covid has made China’s garment factories very difficult. Workers’ wages and prices of raw materials are rising, but prices for customers cannot rise, because foreign countries are also affected by the economic impact of the epidemic.

It’s good for the garment factory to survive this year, but we still insist on hoping to make more garment brands. The happiest thing about the factory is to see that the brands we cooperate with each year grow faster than before. We Help each other to achieve our goal.

Now you have an idea about how to find a clothing manufacturer for your clothing line, Get started !

Hongyu Apparel, a professional custom Clothing Manufacturer since 2003, help you with T Shirt, Streetwear, Swimwear, Sportswear, Sleepwear, and Accessories like Hats, Handbags