The Clothing Tech Pack: What to Include So Factories Quote It Right

Factories do not sew your idea; they sew your document. When the document is vague, every gap gets filled with the factory's cheapest assumption — and the result is a technically compliant sample that looks nothing like your moodboard.

A tech pack closes those gaps. Here is the anatomy of one that works, tuned to what production teams in Turkey actually read first.

The components, in the order factories use them

• Cover page — style name and number, season, date, revision number. Revision discipline prevents the classic disaster of a line sewing to version 2 while you approve version 4.
• Flat sketches — front and back technical drawings with callouts pointing at every construction detail: stitch types, seam placements, hardware. Side views and close-ups where geometry is unusual.
• Bill of materials (BOM) — one row per component: shell fabric with weight and composition, lining, every trim from zip to care label, thread, packaging. Include supplier references where you require a specific article.
• Measurement chart with tolerances — the contractual core, covered below.
• Grading rules — how each measurement changes between sizes.
• Colourways — per-colour breakdowns with Pantone TPX/TCX codes; "navy" is not a colour specification, it is an invitation.
• Artwork pages — print and embroidery placements with dimensions, colour counts and technique.
• Construction and packing notes — hem depths, stitch density (SPI), folding and bagging instructions.

Measurement charts that survive contact with production

List each point of measure with a code, a plain-language description of how to measure it, the base-size value and the tolerance. HPS (high point shoulder) references, half-chest versus full-chest conventions, and stretched-versus-relaxed rules for ribs must be explicit — half of all fit disputes trace back to two people measuring the same garment differently, not to bad sewing.

Fifteen to twenty-five points of measure covers most garments: fewer for a tee, more for tailoring. Every point you leave unspecified is a point the pattern maker decides for you.

Grading, in one paragraph

Grading scales the base size across your range using increments per point — chest typically steps 4-6 cm per size in womenswear, lengths step less, necklines barely move. Standard increments exist and factories will apply house rules happily, but house rules differ between factories, which is why a brand switching suppliers without documented grading suddenly hears that "your sizing changed". Fix your increments once, write them into every pack, and your medium fits the same regardless of who sews it. Verify with a size-set round during the sampling process before first bulk.

The mistakes that cost sample rounds

• Missing tolerances, which turns inspection into a negotiation.
• Reference photos of other brands' garments used in place of measurements — evocative, unquantifiable.
• BOM rows that say "good quality zipper" instead of a brand, size and finish.
• Charts in inches sent to metric factories without conversion, breeding rounding drift on every point.
• Artwork embedded as low-resolution screenshots that cannot be separated for screens.
• No revision log, so nobody can prove which version the quote was based on.

Each of these reliably adds a sample round, and at two weeks per round the sloppy tech pack becomes the slowest and most expensive document in your company.

Version control that factories can follow

Adopt a naming convention on day one and never deviate: style code, description, version, date — "TS-004_OversizedTee_v3_2026-05-14" tells a merchandiser everything a filename can. Send revisions as complete replacement documents rather than emails describing changes, and open each new version with a one-line change log ("v3: sleeve length +2 cm, zip supplier switched to YKK"). When production questions arrive months later, the answer should live in the document, not in a scroll through six weeks of chat history. Factories juggling forty brands treat the organised customer's queries first, for the same reason you answer your tidiest supplier first.

Tech packs in a private label context

For catalogue-based programs you rarely write a full pack from zero — the factory owns the block, and your document shrinks to a modification sheet: colour changes, measurement tweaks, your BOM substitutions and branding placements. That lighter artefact still needs tolerances and Pantone codes, and it still needs revision control. See the private label manufacturing guide for where this sheet sits in the wider process, and the labelling requirements overview for the care-label content your BOM must get legally right. Fit-critical categories like activewear deserve the full-fat pack even when the base style is borrowed.