how to guide · fashion business · by Anuj Kumar, Founder & Editor-in-Chief
A fashion tech pack is the instruction manual a factory uses to price, sample and make your garment. Before it can quote you properly, a factory needs technical flats, a bill of materials, a measurement and grading chart, construction details, colorways, label and packaging instructions, your order quantity and your target price. Without those, any number you get back is a guess.
- A factory quotes from your bill of materials and construction notes. Send a sketch alone and you get a rough estimate, not a price.
- Measurements with tolerances are what stop a sample coming back the wrong size.
- Your tech pack must carry the legal label content for the market you sell in, such as fiber content, country of origin and care instructions in the US.
- Owning the tech pack drawings does not stop a factory making the garment. Contracts and design rights do that work.
What is a tech pack in fashion?
A tech pack, short for technical package, is a set of documents that describes one style so precisely that a factory you have never met can make it without guessing. It usually lives as a PDF or a file in product lifecycle management (PLM) software, one pack per style, with a version number on every page.
Designers sometimes treat it as paperwork that comes after the creative work. Factories see it the other way round. For a production manager, the tech pack is the design. The mood board and the Instagram reference are nice to look at, but the pack is what gets costed, cut and checked on the line.
It also does a job most new founders miss. A tech pack is the written specification you will point to if a bulk order arrives wrong. If a detail is not in the pack, it is very hard to say the factory got it wrong.
The 10 sections a factory needs before it quotes you
Tap a stage to see which sections matter at that point. Open any card for what goes wrong when it is missing.
Showing all 10 sections.
01 · cover page
style summary
Style name and number, season, brand, product category, fabric type, target retail price, date and version number.
what goes wrong without it
- Two versions of the same style get costed and you cannot tell which quote matches which file.
- The factory prices a basic tee when you meant a heavyweight premium one, because nobody stated the positioning.
02 · technical flats
front, back and detail drawings
Black and white, to-scale line drawings with callouts for every seam, pocket, closure, topstitch and trim position. Not a fashion illustration.
what goes wrong without it
- The factory has to interpret a stylized sketch, so pocket placement and proportions drift.
- Hidden details like facings, linings and inside finishes get priced low, then added later at a higher cost.
03 · bill of materials
every material, listed
Shell fabric with composition, weight in GSM and width, plus lining, interlining, thread, zips, buttons, elastic, labels, hangtags and packaging, each with supplier, color reference and quantity per garment.
what goes wrong without it
- This is the section factories cost from. Without it, the quote is a placeholder.
- The factory substitutes cheaper trims to hit the price it guessed you wanted.
04 · construction
how it is sewn
Seam types, stitch types and stitches per inch, seam allowances, edge finishes, pressing and washing or garment-dye instructions.
what goes wrong without it
- A flat-felled seam and an overlocked seam look alike on a sketch but take very different time on the line, so labor cost is wrong.
- Garment washing that is not specified up front leads to shrinkage and size problems later.
05 · points of measure
measurement spec and tolerances
Each point of measure (chest, waist, length, sleeve and so on) with a clear how-to-measure note, the base-size value and a plus-or-minus tolerance.
what goes wrong without it
- Samples come back the wrong size and you pay for another round.
- Without tolerances, you have no agreed basis to reject bulk that measures off.
06 · grading
the size run
How each measurement changes from size to size, and the size split you intend to order, for example XS to XL with a ratio per size.
what goes wrong without it
- Larger sizes fit badly because grading was left to the factory’s house rules.
- Fabric consumption, and therefore price, is based on the wrong size mix.
07 · colorways and artwork
colors, prints and branding
Each colorway with Pantone or lab-dip references, print and embroidery artwork with size and placement, and which trims change color per colorway.
what goes wrong without it
- Each extra color can carry its own minimum order, so an unplanned colorway changes the quote.
- Logo placement shifts by a few centimeters and the whole run looks off.
08 · labels and packaging
the legally required bits
Main label, size label and care and content label with exact wording and placement, hangtags, barcodes, polybags, folding method and carton marks.
what goes wrong without it
- Goods arrive without the fiber content, origin or care information your market requires, and you relabel by hand or cannot sell.
- Retailers and marketplaces reject cartons that do not match their packing rules.
09 · commercial terms
quantity, price and timing
Order quantity per style and color, target price, the delivery terms you want quoted on (such as FOB or DDP), and your required delivery date.
what goes wrong without it
- The factory quotes at a quantity you will never order, so the price looks better than it will be.
- You compare two quotes that were priced on different delivery terms and pick the wrong one.
10 · compliance and change log
standards and revision history
Your restricted substances list, any testing or certification you require, quality standard for inspection, plus a dated log of every change and who approved it.
what goes wrong without it
- A buyer’s test report fails for a chemical the factory never knew was restricted.
- Nobody can prove which version was approved when bulk and sample disagree.
Is your tech pack ready to send for a quote?
Tick what your current file actually contains. The check weights the sections factories cost from most heavily.
Score: 0 of 100
How factories turn your tech pack into a price
Most factory quotes are built from the same blocks. Knowing them tells you which parts of the pack matter most for cost.
| Cost block | Where the factory gets it from | What moves it |
|---|---|---|
| Fabric | Bill of materials, flats and grading | Fabric price per meter, width, and how much each garment consumes across your size mix |
| Trims | Bill of materials and label page | Branded or custom trims, metal versus plastic, number of labels |
| Cut, make, trim (CMT) | Flats and construction notes | Number of operations, seam types, specialist machines, finishing |
| Decoration | Artwork page | Print method, number of colors, embroidery stitch count, placement |
| Washing and testing | Construction and compliance pages | Garment wash or dye, lab tests your buyers or markets require |
| Overhead, margin and delivery | Commercial terms | Quantity, deadline, and the delivery term the price covers |
Delivery terms deserve a line of their own. Under the International Chamber of Commerce’s Incoterms rules, a FOB price covers goods loaded onto the vessel at the port of shipment, and you pay freight, insurance and import costs from there. A DDP price means the seller delivers to your door with duties paid. Ask every factory to quote on the same term, or the cheapest-looking quote may not be the cheapest.
Techpacker, a company that sells tech pack software, says brands with incomplete tech packs average three to five sampling rounds per style against one to two for complete ones, and that unclear measurement specs cause around 40% of first-sample rejections. Those are a vendor’s figures, not independent research, but anyone who has sampled a collection will recognize the pattern.
The label page: what the law says must be on it
Your factory sews in the labels, but you are the one who must get the content right. Pick where you sell to see what your label page needs.
A starting checklist, not a full compliance review. Other rules can apply, for example to wool, fur, leather footwear or chemical content.
For the US detail, see our explainer on the FTC Care Labeling Rule and who must comply, and the care label symbol decoder. Country of origin is also a brand risk, not only a compliance one, as the debate around Gucci’s “Made in China” sneakers showed.
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Who owns your tech pack, and what it does not protect
Your tech pack is the most complete record of your design that exists. Every factory you send it to for a quote gets a copy. That is worth thinking about before you hit send.
The drawings are protected. The garment usually is not.
In the US, the flats and artwork in a tech pack are drawings, and drawings can be protected by copyright. But copyright in a drawing of a useful article, such as a jacket, does not give you the right to stop someone making the jacket. Section 113(b) of the US Copyright Act keeps that long-standing rule in place. The Supreme Court’s decision in Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands (2017) lets you protect artistic features that can be imagined separately from the garment, like a print or graphic, but not the cut or shape of the clothing itself. We cover the limits in does fashion design qualify for copyright protection.
Make sure you own it in the first place
If a freelance technical designer draws your tech pack, do not assume you own it because you paid for it. Under US law, work by an independent contractor only counts as “work made for hire” in limited categories and with a signed written agreement, so the safer route is a written assignment of all rights to your company. The same logic applies in many other countries. Our guide to contracts every new designer must sign before launch covers the freelancer agreement.
Use contracts to cover what IP law does not
- Confidentiality before quoting. A non-disclosure agreement stops a factory sharing your pack. When sourcing in China, lawyers usually recommend an NNN agreement instead: non-disclosure, non-use and non-circumvention. It also stops the factory using your design itself or going around you to your customers. It is generally more useful if it is written in Chinese, governed by Chinese law and enforceable in a Chinese court. See our piece on non-disclosure and non-compete clauses in fashion.
- A manufacturing agreement before bulk. It should say that patterns, samples, tech packs and molds belong to you, that the factory cannot make your styles for anyone else, and that it will return or destroy them at the end.
- Send less, earlier. For a first quote, a factory needs costing information, not your full graded pattern and final artwork. Share the complete pack once terms are signed.
Register what matters
In the EU, a new design that is disclosed in the EU gets automatic protection as an unregistered EU design for three years. A registered EU design can last up to 25 years. The EU renamed these rights and updated the rules on 1 May 2025. Registering your brand name as a trademark in the countries where you manufacture is also worth considering, not only where you sell. For budget options, read how small designers protect their work without big budgets.
Tech pack to bulk: the sample rounds
Your pack gets updated after every round. Each stage has a different job.
| Sample | What it checks | What you update in the pack |
|---|---|---|
| Proto sample | Does the design work at all? Often made in substitute fabric | Construction, proportions, trims |
| Fit sample | Fit on a model or form at base size | Points of measure and tolerances |
| Salesman sample (SMS) | Samples for buyers, lookbooks and pre-orders | Colorways, artwork, final trims |
| Size set | Grading across the size run | Grading rules |
| Pre-production (PP) | Made in bulk fabric and trims, the approved standard | Final sign-off and version lock |
| Top of production (TOP) | Pulled from the first bulk run to confirm it matches PP | Nothing, unless bulk is wrong |
Keep the approved pre-production sample and the matching tech pack version together. If bulk arrives wrong, those two things are your evidence.
Tech pack mistakes that cost you a sampling round
| Mistake | What happens | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Sending an illustration instead of flats | The factory interprets, and proportions drift | Use to-scale technical flats with callouts |
| Fabric listed as “soft cotton” | Priced on the cheapest cotton that fits the words | Give composition, GSM, width and a supplier or swatch |
| No tolerances | No agreed basis to reject off-spec bulk | Add a plus-or-minus value to every point of measure |
| Changes agreed on WhatsApp | Nobody knows which version was approved | Update the pack, bump the version, log the change |
| Label content left to the factory | Wrong or missing legal information for your market | Write the exact wording and placement yourself |
| Full pack sent before any agreement | Your design sits with factories you never use | Sign an NDA or NNN agreement first, and share in stages |
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Tech pack FAQs
What is a tech pack in fashion?
A tech pack is the set of technical documents a factory uses to price, sample and produce a garment. It includes technical flats, a bill of materials, measurements and grading, construction details, colorways, label and packaging instructions, and commercial terms.
What does a factory need to give an accurate quote?
At minimum: technical flats, a bill of materials with fabric composition, weight and width, construction notes, colorways and artwork, your order quantity per style and color, your target price and the delivery term you want quoted, such as FOB or DDP.
Can I get a quote with just a sketch?
You can get a rough estimate, but not a reliable price. Fabric, trims and labor time drive cost, and none of those can be read from a sketch alone.
How much does a tech pack cost?
It depends on the garment’s complexity and who makes it. You can build one yourself with a template or software, or hire a freelance technical designer. If you hire someone, get a written assignment of rights so your company owns the files.
Does a tech pack protect my design?
Only partly. The drawings in it can be protected by copyright, but in the US that does not stop someone making the garment itself. Use NDA or NNN agreements, a manufacturing agreement and design or trademark registration to protect the design.
What labels does a tech pack need for the US market?
For most apparel, the label must show fiber content by generic name and percentage, country of origin, and the company name or FTC Registered Identification Number, plus a permanent care label under the FTC Care Labeling Rule.
What is an NNN agreement?
An NNN agreement is a non-disclosure, non-use and non-circumvention contract often used with manufacturers in China. Unlike a basic NDA, it also stops the factory using your design itself or dealing directly with your customers.
Sources
- US Federal Trade Commission, Threading Your Way Through the Labeling Requirements Under the Textile and Wool Acts
- US Federal Trade Commission, Care Labeling of Textile Wearing Apparel and Certain Piece Goods (16 CFR Part 423)
- US Consumer Product Safety Commission, 16 CFR 1120.3, drawstrings in children’s upper outerwear
- European Commission, Regulation (EU) 1007/2011 on textile fibre names and labelling
- 17 U.S.C. § 113(b), scope of rights in works portraying useful articles
- US Supreme Court, Star Athletica, LLC v. Varsity Brands, Inc. (2017)
- Mewburn Ellis, EU design changes from 1 May 2025
- IPWatchdog, Understanding NNN agreements in China
- Techpacker, What is a tech pack (vendor figures on revision rounds)
Anuj Kumar is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Fashion Law Journal and author of A Practical Guide to Fashion Law. This guide is general information, not legal advice. Labeling and IP rules vary by country, so check with a lawyer before you launch.
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