Hoodie and Sweatshirt Manufacturers: Fleece, Cost and What to Specify

This page is for a brand pricing a real fleece programme. It covers why fleece is a different manufacturing problem from jersey, what a hoodie actually costs to build, what sets the minimum order, the construction details that separate a good hoodie from a cheap one, and how long it takes. It sits inside the wider explanation of why apparel factories are specialised by product category — the plant that makes your tees well may have no fleece finishing at all.

Why fleece is a different manufacturing problem from jersey

Three things change once you move from a tee to a sweatshirt, and all three cost money.

Brushing is a separate finishing step. French terry is a knit with uncut float loops on the back. Fleece is that same loopback structure with the loops napped or brushed on the inside for insulation. The napping runs as its own pass through a machine with rotating wire-covered rollers after knitting and before or after dyeing. It is where fleece quality is won or lost: too little brushing and the hand is flat, too much and you shed fibre, lose GSM and weaken the fabric. A jersey plant with no napping range simply cannot make fleece, and buys it in.

Weight changes the machinery. 320 gsm is the standard hoodie weight, with the normal apparel band at 280 to 340 gsm and heavyweight fleece reaching 400 gsm and above. Heavier fabric means heavier feed mechanisms, different needle and thread sizes, slower machine speeds and more operator effort per seam. That is a real part of why a hoodie takes 21 standard minutes against a tee's 8.5, before you count the extra operations. Where each weight sits is set out in the GSM weight chart for knit fabrics.

There are simply more operations. A tee has a neck, two sleeves, two side seams and two hems. A hoodie adds a hood of two or three panels, often self-lined, a drawcord channel with eyelets, a kangaroo or set-in pocket with bartacks at each opening, ribbed cuffs and hem with their own attachment operations, and on a full-zip a zipper insertion and a chin guard. Each of those is an operation, a machine and a chance to get it wrong.

Napping is also a customs definition. CBP's Informed Compliance Publication on apparel terminology defines a sweatshirt in heading 6110 as a pullover with a snug bottom and cuffs in close-knit unpatterned fabric, napped on the inside surface only. Nap the outside and you have argued yourself into a different classification. Terms used here are defined in the Yarnstick glossary of sourcing and trade terms.

The worked cost build: why hoodies cost two to three times a tee

Worked FOB cost build, 320 gsm brushed loopback fleece pullover hoodie, Asian export factory. Fabric consumption is roughly 1.1 kg per garment.

Against the canonical tee at $4.30 FOB, that is 2.4 to 1 — the familiar two-to-three-times rule, now explained rather than asserted. Fabric consumption goes up roughly four times, sewing time roughly two and a half. Notice that fabric is 59.3 percent of FOB here against 51.2 percent on a tee, above the 35 to 50 percent band typical of basics. The heavier the garment, the more the cost sheet becomes a fabric purchase with some sewing attached, and the less any negotiation on the sewing rate can achieve.

Two cautions on reading a fleece quote. First, the $5.50/kg above is a yarn-plus-conversion basis; mills also quote finished dyed fabric per kilogram, which for jersey runs nearer $8.15/kg. A $5.50 quote and an $8.15 quote can describe the same fabric, so confirm the basis before comparing mills. Second, CM equals SMV times cost-per-minute divided by line efficiency, and efficiency is the number factories quote optimistically. A realistic export line runs at 60 to 75 percent, not 100. The full import stack on top of FOB is broken out in landed cost for apparel imports.

Landed from India, a custom 320 gsm hoodie floors at $13.40 per unit — FOB $10.20 plus $0.45 freight, $1.68 MFN duty at 16.5 percent, $1.02 Section 301 forced-labor duty at 10 percent, $0.035 MPF and $0.013 HMF. That floor does not amortise away with volume, which is the number to hold against any blank quote. Blank comparisons are worked in blank hoodies and sweatshirts compared on spec.

What hoodie manufacturers actually set MOQ on, and why it is not the dye lot

On a tee, the minimum order is a dye-vessel problem: 300 to 500 kg of fabric per custom colour, which at 0.27 kg a garment is 1,100 to 1,850 tees. The arithmetic behind that is in how tee factories differ and what a tee costs to build. Run the same sum on fleece and it inverts.

300 kg minimum dye lot ÷ 1.1 kg per hoodie = about 273 hoodies. 500 kg ÷ 1.1 kg = about 455 hoodies.

So a hoodie reaches a dye-lot minimum at roughly a quarter of the piece count a tee does. Yet the quoted MOQ for hoodies and sweats at an export factory is still around 500 pieces per colour. The binding constraints have moved:

• Trim minimums, which stack independently. Custom tipped drawcords, branded zipper pulls, custom-finish metal eyelets and woven labels each carry their own minimum and often their own colour minimum. A hoodie has four or five such trims where a tee has one.
• Knitting set-up. A loopback terry machine has to be threaded and run in; short runs waste more fabric in start-up than they produce.
• The napping range. Brushing is set up per fabric batch, so short lots carry a disproportionate share of that set-up.

The practical consequence: in fleece manufacturing, negotiate trims before you negotiate fabric. Using the factory's stock drawcord and standard eyelet, in a colour they already hold, is usually worth more MOQ relief than arguing about the dye lot. Fleece is the category where the general "dye lots set the minimum" rule bends.

The construction details that separate a good hoodie from a cheap one

Photographs do not show any of this. Specify it, or the factory will choose for you.

• Rib recovery. Cuffs and hem are 1x1 or 2x2 rib, and rib is chosen because its width extensibility is about twice that of single jersey. What matters commercially is recovery, not stretch. Specify fibre content including elastane percentage and rib GSM; 2x2 has deeper wales and more recovery bulk than 1x1. Cuffs that bag out after five wears are a rib spec failure, not a sewing failure.
• Drawcord and eyelets. Specify cord width, finished length, tipping material, and whether eyelets are metal grommets, self-fabric buttonholes or none. Metal eyelets need a washed-and-tested finish or they mark the fabric; nickel content also matters if you sell into markets with restrictions.
• Pocket bartacks. Both openings of a kangaroo pocket take the whole load when someone puts their hands in. Specify a bartack at each corner, the stitch count and the placement. This is the single most common failure point in returned fleece.
• Shoulder taping. A twill or self-fabric tape across the shoulder seam stops the seam growing under the weight of the garment. On a 320 gsm fleece it is not decoration.
• Hood construction. Two-panel versus three-panel changes how the hood stands. Self-lined or jersey-lined hoods look and wear better and add fabric cost. Specify panel count, lining, and whether the hood seam is bound.
• Stitch class per seam. Shoulder and side seams 504 three-thread overlock or 516 five-thread safety stitch; cuff and hem attach 504; topstitching 401 or 406 chainstitch, 11 to 12 stitches per inch. Writing stitch class into the tech pack is what stops a substitution.

Hoodie lead times, stated PO to FOB and PO to DC

A dyed hoodie sits at 10 to 14 weeks PO to FOB, higher in that band than a basic tee's 8 to 12, because bulk production alone runs 6 to 8 weeks against a tee's 4 and the napping and finishing add a stage. A custom dye colour adds 4 to 8 weeks to fabric sourcing on top. Development is heavier too: a first hoodie sample costs $300 to $600 against $200 to $350 for a tee, and two to four rounds are normal.

Hoodie and sweatshirt manufacturers cluster where knit backward linkage is strongest, because fleece is fabric-heavy and every extra fabric handoff shows up in the calendar. Bangladesh's cotton knitwear is roughly 56 percent of its ready-made garment export value, and its major groups spin, knit, dye and cut-and-sew on one campus — see sourcing knits from Bangladesh. India's Tirupur cluster handles more than half of India's knitwear exports and is the most MOQ-flexible major Asian source at 50 to 1,000 pieces per style. Vietnam leads on synthetic and performance blends and carries the higher 12.5 percent Section 301 rate. China remains strongest where hardware and complex construction are involved.

What to send a hoodie manufacturer before asking for a price

Send this checklist first. A hoodie manufacturing quote against a vague brief is not comparable to anything, and the differences surface later as claims. The full document structure is in what belongs in a garment tech pack.

Frequently asked questions