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Clothes Manufacturing bears a rich terminology used by artists, designers, and producers to communicate about all aspects of creating textiles to be used for clothing.
And like any other industry, clothes manufacturing professionals use a specific set of words to communicate with one another about the design and production of fabrics.
If you are a brand interested in joining this field, it is important to be aware of the next expressions, listed in this article.
Mind-Blowing Expressions
1. Bulk
Bulk, or you might hear ‘go to bulk’ or ‘approved to bulk’ basically means that you finished your sampling, you’re happy with how the samples have turned out and you’re ready to go to your main order. Bulk means the final order of your products. The term ‘go to bulk’ or ‘approved to bulk’ is basically you giving the clothes manufacturing your approval. You’re saying that you’re happy with the way the samples have turned out and you’re ready to commit to that final order.
2. CMT
The second term I want to share with you is CMT, which stands for cut, make and trim. This means that the clothes manufacturing has the ability to cut out the fabric, sew it together and add any trims that are required, maybe that’s buttons, labels, zips, etc. This can also be a type of quote, so you might see that your estimate says CMT only and that’s the clothes manufacturing telling you that they’re not going to be providing any of those fabrics or trims and that’s something that you need to source yourself.
How do you manufacture your own clothing line? What do you call clothing manufacturing?
CFB – Clothes Manufacturing
3. Ex-Factory
Ex-factory is the date that the bulk will leave the clothes manufacturing. But with any of delivery dates or conversations around dates with your clothes manufacturing, you need to be super clear about what you mean. So for example, the ex-factory date will be different to the shipping day in most cases because you need to factor in how long it is between the clothes manufacturing and the port and how long that will take by road. So do make sure that you really clear on exactly what’s going on with any delivery dates to make sure that you don’t miss any slots that you’ve booked for shipping, freight, etc.
4. FOB
Number four is FOB which stands for free on board and this may be something that comes up when you receive quotes from suppliers. It usually means that the cost of delivering the goods to the nearest port are included, as well as the cost of clothes manufacturing. That normally includes fabrics as well. Do check though, and I say this because that’s what it’s supposed to mean, but sometimes you find that clothes manufacturing can kind of twist quotes in their favor. So, you want to make sure that everything’s really clearly itemized and detailed with the quote. It doesn’t usually include the actual shipping rate or any other fees like taxes, import duty, insurance, etc.
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CFB – Factory for Woven and Knit
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5. Grade Rules
Number five is grading or grade roles. Grading is the difference of the measurements between each size and the grade rules basically tell the clothes manufacturing how much difference a measurement needs to be between each point of measure and each size that you’re creating your range in. Now the grade rules are going to be found on your tech pack or your spec sheet and they’re going to advise those measurements to the clothes manufacturing.
It’s going to be for each point of measure as well, and they’re going to vary between different styles and different positions on that style. Do make sure that these are done custom for each style rather than just like a quick copy/paste job. Some of them will be the same, but they need to be checked for each point of measure. That needs to be manually done to make sure that you’re considering all of the different sizes that you’re making.
6. Lead Time
Number six is lead time and that’s the amount of time between confirming your order with the clothes manufacturing and when you’re receiving the final goods at the distribution centre.
Again, this can be a tricky one. Like I was saying previously with dates, sometimes manufacturer for clothes are going to quote their lead time as when the order is leaving them, in which case you need to then speak to your courier or whoever’s delivering your goods as well so that you get the actual lead time from start to finish. And it may be in many cases that you need to speak to a couple of different places in order to get that date.
7. MOQ
Number seven is the MOQ, and this is the big one. You’re going to be hearing this constantly if you’re a small business or if you’re a startup. It means the minimum order quantity, and this is going to apply to various things. So it might be the minimum amount of garments that the clothes manufacturing is prepared to produce, it might be the minimum amount of fabric that you can buy or the minimum amount of trims, labels, barcodes, bags, whatever it might be.
Sometimes you can get round the MOQ by paying a surcharge. Obviously that has a big impact on your costings though. Pretty much every business that you work with on a retail business to business basis are going to have minimums. And sometimes the minimums are something manageable like 50 units or 50 meters of fabric, sometimes it’s going to be 10,000. So the MOQ really dictates a lot about who you can actually do business with.
8. Tolerance
Number nine is tolerance. Tolerance is the amount of variance that you’re willing to accept on a particular part of a garment. It’s a little bit hard to understand but hopefully an example will make it much clearer. So if for example a particular measurement on a garment I’m working on is supposed to measure 40cm and I’ve applied a tolerance of 1cm, that means that the factory could deliver the garment at that point measure in 39cm or 41cm without there being any issue or any penalties.
If, however the measurement was say 45cm, that’s 5cm difference and we asked for only 1cm. So it’s at that point when you talk to the factory about them remaking or correcting the issue, or having penalties applied. The tolerance is super important to have outlined on your tech pack so that you can control the quality.
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CFB – Clothes Manufacturing
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CFB as your clothes manufacturing
CFB is a Portugal based clothes manufacturing having a different perspective from the conventional fast fashion industry and that perspective is providing eco-friendly and sustainable products to the market.
We produces high-quality clothing such as T-shirts, Polos, Henley shirts, Hoodies, Denim Jackets, Shorts, Long Sleeves, Crew Necks, Pants/Jeans, Chinos, Biker-Jackets, Shirts, Vests, Dresses…
We have been at the forefront of introducing sustainable technologies in the field of textile and producing green products for the last 15 years. CFB believes in striving hard for making a change in this society. Our input revolves around the ultimate effort to have a fruitful output for the environment.
