Why won’t my factory give me the measurements for my clothing design?

Why it’s a mistake to develop your design without a tech pack

Has this ever happened to you?   

You want to move your production to a new factory, so you ask your current factory to give you the measurements they use to sew your production, but they’re not getting back with you, or they’re not sending you all the info you asked for.   

It kind of seems like they don’t want to give it to you.   

Why wouldn’t they give you your measurements?  Isn’t this your company’s property, don’t they have to give it to you? 

Unfortunately, they don’t.   

Your factory doesn’t want to give you your measurements because having them will make it easier for you to move your business to a different manufacturer.   

Most new brands start by sending their factory a competitor sample and asking for their own design to be made from it with a few changes.  They let the factory do the sizing and grading (the measurements for each size) for them. 

While it’s not necessarily bad to let your factory grade your design for you, you need to make sure they share these measurements with you so you can put them in your tech pack.  The problem is, they often don’t want to. 

The best way to make sure you have the freedom to counter source is to start with a tech pack that includes a graded spec. 

This will make it easier to counter source and will expand the number of factories you can work with, since many factories won’t work with you without a tech pack. 

Aside from not being able to easily get your measurements to counter source, there are lots of reasons starting the development of your design without a tech pack can cause issues later.  Check in to the next blog post for even more reasons to start your development with a tech pack. 

What if you’ve already started your development without a tech pack and now you want to counter source?   

I help clients in this exact position every day.  Contact me and we can chat about how to get started.

Need help creating your first tech pack?

Schedule a call to chat about your needs and see if we would be a good fit to work together. The call is free and there’s no obligation.