The Complete Apparel Tech Pack Guide

Part of the how to source apparel direct from factories cluster. The good tech pack guides already explain what a flat sketch is. This one covers what they leave out: costing benchmarks, grading rules published rather than promised, fabric testing standards, and what an Indian factory expects to receive. A tech pack is not documentation of a design. It is the contract the sample and the bulk are judged against.

One document, several names

Before the sections, a naming note, because buyers, factories and design schools all call this file something slightly different and none of the differences are real. Assuming a supplier means something specific by their phrasing is a reliable way to waste a week.

The same specification, under the names the market actually uses for it.

One phrase in that space means something else entirely. Aer Tech Pack is a backpack: the bag brand Aer lists its Tech Pack 3 at 16 litres and $219 as of 16 August 2026, so searches for aer tech pack, aer tech pack 2 and aer tech pack 3 are shopping for luggage rather than looking for a manufacturing document. Nothing below applies to it.

How to make a tech pack: the ten sections a complete apparel tech pack contains

1. Cover and style header — name, number, season, date, version number, fit block reference, target FOB.
2. Technical flat sketches — proportional front, back and side line art, with callouts to every seam, pocket, placket, stitch detail and piece of hardware.
3. Bill of materials — every component with supplier, reference, colour, placement, consumption and unit.
4. Colourways — each mapped component by component to Pantone TCX codes, with the approval rules set out in colour approval, lab dips and Delta E.
5. Construction and detail pages — SPI, stitch and seam class per operation, seam allowance, topstitch margin, hem depth, bartacks, elastic tension, label placement.
6. Points of measure with grading and tolerances — base size, grade rules, tolerance per POM.
7. Labelling and packaging — artwork, placement, folding, polybag spec with suffocation warning, carton markings, ratio packing.
8. Care instructions — the exact wording that will be sewn in.
9. QC and testing requirements — AQL level, lab tests, wash standard.
10. Cost sheet and revision history.

The bill of materials, line by line

The BOM is where cost lives and where factories improvise if you leave a gap. Name shell fabric, lining, interlining, rib, thread with ticket number and colour, zippers, buttons, snaps, drawcords, elastic, main, care, size and content labels, hangtags, price tickets, polybag and carton.

Each line carries six fields: supplier, reference, colour, placement, consumption and unit. Consumption is the field brands most often skip, and the one that turns a BOM into a cost sheet. Fabric is 35–50% of FOB on a knit basic, so a BOM without consumption is a cost estimate missing its largest input.

Points of measure, and the two conventions you must state explicitly

Tops, nine core POMs: chest one inch below armhole, side seam to side seam; shoulder width; body length from HPS (high point shoulder, the highest point of the shoulder seam at the neck); sleeve length from shoulder seam to opening; sleeve opening; neck width, inside opening; front neck drop; armhole; bottom sweep.

Bottoms, eight: waist, relaxed and stretched if elasticated; hip; front rise; back rise; inseam; outseam; thigh one inch below crotch; leg opening.

Dresses and skirts add four: bust, waist, skirt length, sweep.

Most garments carry 15–25 points of measure. Two conventions must be written on the page, not assumed:

1. Flat measure or circumference. Half-measure laid flat is the standard convention in Asian factories. Specify circumference where the factory reads flat and every garment comes back at double.
2. Relaxed or extended at every elasticated point. A relaxed waist and a stretched waist are different numbers, and both are correct.

Measurement tolerances by garment category, and why tolerance is not a target

Tolerance by category and by how fit-critical the point is.

Two rules sit behind that table. Knits carry wider tolerance than wovens. And tolerance tightens as a point becomes more fit-critical and visible — chest, waist, body length, inseam — and loosens on sweep, sleeve opening and pocket placement.

Tolerance is not a licence to run consistently to one edge. Measure the mean of the sample, not only individual pieces. Take a tee with a 20-inch flat chest spec and ±0.5-inch tolerance. If the bulk mean sits at +0.45 inches, every piece technically passes, but the garment is 0.9 inches wider around the body than the one you approved. And production scatters: with pieces spread roughly ±0.2 inches around that mean, part of the lot lands at +0.65 and fails outright. Write a mean requirement into the spec — say, sample mean within ±0.15 inches of the stated measurement — alongside the per-piece tolerance. See AQL inspection for brand owners.

Grading rules: publish the table, do not promise it

Most guides list grading as a section and never say what goes in it. What goes in it is a number for every point of measure at every size.

A grade rule is the increment applied to a point of measure between adjacent sizes. Grading is not uniform: chest, waist and hip grade at one increment, body length at another, neck and armhole smaller, and pocket placement may not grade at all. Increments come from your own fit block and are silhouette-specific, which is why a generic grading template produces a garment that fits at M and fails at XL.

Three requirements:

• Publish the full graded spec — every size across the top, every POM down the side. A base size plus "grade as standard" means whatever the factory's pattern master decides it means.
• Name the base size, the size the pattern was developed on and the fit sample is made in.
• Verify at size set. The size-set sample exists to check grade rules across the range. It is the cheap place to catch a grading error; the expensive place is top of production. See the sampling calendar from proto to TOP.

Stitch and seam classification under ISO 4915, ISO 4916 and ASTM D6193

Stitch types are classified by ISO 4915 and seam types by ISO 4916; ASTM D6193 is the US practice, and older specs still cite Federal Standard 751A. Specifying a class number is the difference between the construction you designed and whatever machine was free.

Stitch classes under ISO 4915, with typical apparel use.

Seam classes under ISO 4916 run 1 superimposed, 2 lapped, 3 bound, 4 flat or butted, 5 decorative, 6 edge finishing, 7 edge attach, 8 single-ply. Specify SPI too: 10–13 knits, 12–16 wovens, 8–10 topstitch.

How a real tee spec reads

• Shoulder and side seams: 504 three-thread overlock.
• Neck rib attached 504; neck tape topstitched 301 or 406.
• Sleeve and bottom hems: 406 two-needle coverstitch, quarter-inch spacing.
• SPI 11–12. Thread 100% spun polyester, Tex 27 general and Tex 40 topstitch.

Write that and a factory cannot quietly substitute a single-needle lockstitch hem on a knit, which cracks the first time the garment is pulled over a shoulder.

Fabric and garment testing standards to name in the tech pack

Testing requirements belong in the tech pack, not a separate email, because they change the fabric the mill supplies.

Test methods and typical brand minimums to state in section nine.

Two traps. AATCC TM135 uses top-loading machines and ISO 6330 uses front-loaders, so results are not interchangeable — name one. And specify compacted fabric with a target residual shrinkage for cotton knits, because untreated ring-spun cotton jersey shrinks 5.0–7.5%. Grey scale ratings run 1 to 5; report both scales, colour change and staining.

Tech pack format: the file, the version and what you actually send

There is no standard tech pack format, and that is an operational problem rather than a stylistic one — every factory reads its own conventions fluently and yours slowly. Three rules hold whatever tool you build it in.

One style per file. Three colourways of one style is one pack. Three styles is three packs. A combined file guarantees that a correction to one style gets applied to the version number the other two are also running under.

Send something that cannot be edited, alongside something that can. The factory needs a fixed reference for the version it is quoting and sewing. Your merchandiser needs a working file to correct. Both, every issue.

The version number is part of the format, not decoration. Put it on every page, keep a revision log, and reissue the pack rather than emailing a correction. The sealed sample and the current version together are what bulk is judged against, and that only works if there is exactly one current version.

Starting from a structure beats starting from a blank page, and a first draft assembled against a tech pack template with the ten sections laid out will surface the gaps faster than writing prose at a factory.

Tech packs by product: tee, hoodie, sweatshirt and cap

The ten sections do not change by product. What changes is which section carries the risk, and therefore where your time goes.

Where the specification effort concentrates, by garment. First-sample costs are the figures from the table below.

A t shirt tech pack is the shortest document on this list and the one most often under-specified. A simple t shirt tech pack for manufacturing still has to name the fabric as weight, construction, yarn count and finish rather than "cotton jersey", publish the nine core points of measure graded across every size with tolerances, and state the stitch classes — 504 on shoulder and side seams, 406 on hems, SPI 11–12. That is four pages, not forty.

A hoodie tech pack adds everything hanging off the body: hood pattern and lining, drawcord material and finish, eyelet type and spacing, rib composition and stretch at cuff and hem, pocket shape with bartack placement and count, and a heavier fleece specified by weight and face finish. It is a bigger sample bill and a much bigger sewing job — roughly 21 standard minutes against 8.5 for a tee.

A sweatshirt tech pack is that same body without the hood, lining, drawcord and eyelets. Fewer trims, but the risk moves to the neckline, because the rib now carries the whole fit at the top of the garment: specify composition, weight, stretch and recovery, and the exact neck drop.

A hat tech pack is a different kind of document altogether. Caps are usually built on a supplier's existing body at 100–300 pieces per design, so the pack specifies panel count, crown profile and structure, closure, sweatband, eyelet and stitch detail, and then the decoration in full — stitch count, thread references, digitising and placement from a stated datum. Grade rules rarely apply, because sizing is fixed or adjustable.

What an Indian factory expects in a tech pack

India is the most MOQ-flexible major Asian source at 50–1,000 pieces per style, so it is the usual first stop for US brands, and the cluster you send the pack to changes what it must contain.

• Send flat measurements in inches with centimetres alongside. Half-measure laid flat is the working convention on the floor.
• Match the cluster to the product. Tirupur for cotton knits, where tee and polo blocks are house knowledge; Bengaluru for tailored wovens and outerwear; Delhi NCR for embellished and women's fashion wovens; Ludhiana for flat knit.
• Expect the mill inside the cluster. Tirupur is vertically integrated from spinning to garmenting, so name yarn count and GSM, not "cotton jersey" — for example 180 gsm single jersey, combed ring-spun 30s. See reading a fabric spec: GSM, yarn count and spinning.
• Budget for the dyeing constraint. Tirupur dyehouses run under a Zero Liquid Discharge mandate from a 2011 Madras High Court order: a real environmental credential and a real capacity constraint, so custom colour needs calendar.
• Specify embellishment tightly. Embroidery, handwork and block print are Indian strengths, and therefore where an under-specified pack gets interpreted. Give stitch counts, thread references and placement from HPS.

More in sourcing apparel from India.

What a tech pack actually costs to execute

The tech pack itself takes 1–2 weeks to write. The cost is in what it triggers.

First-sample cost by garment, before freight, with 2–4 rounds normal.

At two to four rounds a single style runs $900–$5,000, and a 30-style collection $27,000–$150,000 in development before a unit is sold. Lab dips add $15–50 per colour over 5–10 business days, two to three rounds standard and four to five for saturated reds, neons and deep navies. Around 60% of samples never reach production.

Set that against the 40% first-sample rejection figure: an ambiguous measurement page costs a sample round, and a sample round costs more than the day it takes to write the page properly.

Tech pack completeness checklist

Run this before you issue. Any unchecked box is a decision the factory will make for you.

• [ ] Version number on every page, plus a revision log
• [ ] Base size named, and a full graded spec for every size produced
• [ ] Tolerance per point of measure, plus a sample-mean requirement
• [ ] Flat versus circumference stated; relaxed versus extended at every elasticated point
• [ ] BOM lines carry supplier, reference, colour, placement, consumption and unit
• [ ] Stitch class (ISO 4915), seam class (ISO 4916), SPI, seam allowance, hem depth
• [ ] Thread ticket number and colour per operation
• [ ] Pantone code and system for every component in every colourway
• [ ] Fabric specified as weight, construction, yarn count and finish, not a fabric name
• [ ] Test methods and acceptance levels named
• [ ] Fibre content, origin, RN or legal name, care wording, and label placement from HPS
• [ ] AQL level and inspection stage agreed in writing

Tech pack decisions have duty consequences

One cross-check most guides miss. CBP's Informed Compliance Publication on apparel terminology defines a t-shirt under heading 6109 as a lightweight jersey knit with hemmed sleeves and bottom, a close neckline, no buttons, no opening and no collar. Add a placket or a collar in the construction pages and the garment leaves 6109 for 6105 or 6106 — and the general rate on cotton moves from 16.5% to 19.7%. That is a design decision with a tariff attached, made months before anyone looks at an entry.

Rates here are illustrative of method; verify against the current HTSUS. See HTS codes for apparel and US apparel labeling requirements. Terms are defined in the Yarnstick glossary.

Frequently asked questions