What to ask a clothing manufacturer before you pay

Is the sample the same as the bulk?

No, and assuming it is causes more first-run disappointment than any other single thing.

A sample is made by the best machinist in the building, working alone, unhurried, from fabric the factory chose off a roll it already had. Bulk is made by a line, at speed, from a roll bought for your order. Those are different conditions and they produce different garments, even when everybody involved is honest and competent.

So ask for a sample cut from the roll your order will actually be made from. Not a sample of the same fabric by name. The same roll. Fabric is bought in production lots, and two lots of the same specification differ in shade, in hand, and in how much they shrink. A lot number on a photograph of the roll is the cheapest verification there is, and a factory that has the fabric can send one the same day.

If the answer is that they will confirm the fabric after the deposit, you have learned something useful about where you sit in their queue.

Is the minimum per style or per colour?

Per colour, almost always, and this is the question most often answered too late.

A minimum of 50 means 50 of one style in one colour. Three colours is 150 pieces, not 50 split three ways. Brands routinely plan a first order as three colourways at the quoted minimum, then discover the real commitment is triple what they budgeted.

The reason is worth knowing, because it tells you where the number can move. That floor usually comes from the mill rather than the sewing line. Fabric is dyed in lots, and a dye lot has a minimum of its own; below it the mill will not run the colour. So the constraint you are negotiating against is often not the factory's capacity at all, and asking the factory to go lower is asking the wrong party.

Two things follow. Ask whether the minimum is the sewing minimum or the fabric minimum, because they are different numbers with different room in them. And ask whether the colour you want is already being run for somebody else, because joining an existing dye lot can put a small order under a floor that would otherwise rule it out.

What has to be in the first email?

A quantity and a date. Guess both if you have to.

An enquiry without a number and without a delivery window cannot be quoted, cannot be scheduled, and cannot be checked against capacity. There is nothing for the person reading it to do except ask you for the number and the date, which costs a day and often does not happen at all. This is the most common reason a first approach goes unanswered, and brands generally read the silence as rejection when it was closer to a blocked form field.

A guess is not a commitment and everybody involved knows it. "Around 200 pieces, wanted for March" is enough to price, enough to check the calendar against, and enough to tell you quickly if you are talking to the wrong factory. A precise number you are not sure about is worse than an approximate one you have flagged as approximate.

Include what the garment is, how many, when you want it, and where it ships. Four facts, and the reply comes back with a price in it.

What happens if I leave the tolerance off a measurement?

Somebody else chooses it, and you find out what they chose when the boxes arrive.

Every measurement on a garment is made to a tolerance, because no cutting and sewing process is exact. The only question is whether the tolerance is written down and agreed, or assumed. A spec that says a chest is 54 cm and stops there does not mean the factory will hit 54 cm exactly; it means the factory will apply whatever tolerance is normal for them, and normal varies.

Half a centimetre on a woven and one centimetre on a knit are the usual working figures. Knits move more because the fabric itself moves more: it relaxes off the roll, it relaxes after washing, and the same garment measures differently depending on how long it has been lying flat. A woven is more stable and the tolerance can be tighter.

Write a tolerance next to every measurement that matters, and accept that a garment measuring within it is a correct garment. This cuts both ways and that is the point. It gives you grounds to reject a piece that falls outside, and it stops a dispute over three millimetres on a hem that nobody would ever notice.

When is the balance due?

After you have seen the goods, if you can arrange it that way.

A typical structure is a deposit to start and the balance before shipping. That remaining share is the only leverage you have, and it is leverage precisely because it has not been paid yet. Once the full amount is settled, every remaining conversation about a fault, a shade that drifted, or a count that came up short is a conversation you are having from a position of asking rather than agreeing.

This is not an accusation aimed at factories. It is how commercial terms work in any trade, and a factory has its own exposure to manage: it has bought your fabric and booked your line, and it is protecting against an order that gets abandoned halfway. The point is that the sequence is negotiable and most first-time buyers do not know that it is.

Ask when the balance falls due, and ask what you get to see before it does. Inspection photographs, a measurement report against your own spec, and a shot of the packed cartons are all normal to request and cheap to produce. A factory that will send them is telling you something. So is one that will not.

What this looks like when it goes right

None of these five questions is adversarial and none of them takes long to answer. A competent factory has all five answers already and can give them inside a day, because they are the same questions it asks its own suppliers.

The value is not in catching anybody out. It is that asking them early moves the whole conversation from a price to a plan, and a first order that arrives as agreed is worth more than one that arrives cheap.