What is a tech pack for?
If you are an emerging clothing company that hasn't invested in tech packs yet, you may be considering whether that investment would be worth it to you. Perhaps you are wondering if tech packs are truly important, how they are used, and whether tech packs would really help you. While the application of tech packs can vary slightly from one company to another, many uses are common throughout the fashion industry. Let's talk about the definition and purpose of a tech pack, its role in the product development process, and what it can do for you as an apparel brand.
What is a technical package (tech pack)?
A tech pack is a document that includes comprehensive design information about an apparel product, which explains a design idea clearly in an industry-recognized format. A finalized tech pack should include all the details that you need to provide to your manufacturing partner. When well-made, the tech pack eases the development and production processes by reducing questions, confusion, misinterpretation, errors, information loss, and unnecessary revisions.
How a tech pack works for you
A tech pack is a dynamic working document that functions as a communication and record-keeping tool between you and your vendors, tracking your design as it moves through development and into production. The document gets revised and goes through multiple iterations along the way. It serves as a constant reference point at each stage in the process and becomes a tool that facilitates design decisions, sourcing, costing, patternmaking, sampling, quality assurance, and production. This single document serves many functions, including helping you work through the following aspects of product development.
Early design decisions
Creating the initial tech pack involves taking a design idea and planning all the information that's needed to begin the prototyping process before mass manufacturing. This often involves making decisions about the style that haven't been determined yet. This is important because the decisions that you make during this phase will have a significant impact on the prototype results and revisions process. Having a well-thought-out tech pack helps eliminate unnecessary revisions because intentional decisions were made upfront. I recommend doing a lot of product research during this design planning phase so that you can clearly define what you expect from your product. Many design decisions affect the manufacturing and sourcing costs, so consider your target price point and budget for production during this stage. Defining what you want the outcome to be is critical and is worth spending time on before investing time and money on samples. Having a defined and clearly expressed design helps your vendors create your design more efficiently with fewer prototypes, which will save time and money on samples.
Sourcing a factory
Having a tech pack is helpful when finding a factory to work with. Factories have different specialties, equipment, and know-how, and having a tech pack that succinctly communicates your product design will allow a factory to evaluate whether it's a suitable option to manufacture your product. Simply having a tech pack opens the door to having those conversations with potential factories.
Sourcing materials
A tech pack includes a list called the Bill of Materials (or BOM), which includes every material component of your product. This itemized list helps you plan for every material you need without forgetting or overlooking anything. The BOM provides a place for you to keep track of the sourcing decisions you make. At the beginning of development, this list acts as a shopping list where you can easily see what you need to source. If your vendor does your sourcing, the BOM is an efficient way for you to specify the material properties of the items you require for submission. Many brands use the BOM to record when vendor-sourced materials are approved, making it easy to see which items are still pending. The BOM also communicates the placement of different materials within the garment.
Costing
A tech pack serves as a costing tool when you send it to different sewing contractors for production cost estimates. The factory can calculate pricing based on the construction and material information included in a tech pack. Requesting estimates from several vendors allows you to price compare as needed. Of course, other things also need to be considered when costing, but the tech pack helps you request and evaluate the style-specific costs, especially labor costs.
Patternmaking
Before your patternmaker can start working on the sewing pattern for your product, the patternmaker will need a clear understanding of your design. A tech pack provides a concise explanation of your design requirements, which helps speed up the communication process so the patternmaker can more efficiently deliver what you're asking for. Your design requirements include elements such as the silhouette, fit, design features, materials, and construction.
Many patternmakers expect you to provide measurement specifications for your product. A tech pack is the means to tell them what you expect regarding size and fit. Starting with well-researched measurement specs at the beginning of development can help you attain fit approval faster. (Some patternmakers are willing to collaborate with you to determine specs. However, other patternmakers consider recommending specs a liability, because it is not in their scope of services.)
A tech pack also houses your grading increments between sizes. Giving this information to your pattern grader helps you maintain control over your grading and sizing, and therefore, control the consistency of fit of your products across your collection. Consistent grading within a brand helps the customer have confidence that they can order the same size from your brand in different styles and expect a similar fit.
Sampling
During the sampling phase of development, you'll need to track changes and communicate your revision requests. A tech pack provides the perfect place to contain all your feedback about each sample, ensuring you (and your vendors) can easily find and review that information without having to wade through emails or rely on your memory of verbal conversations. I recommend recording every change you make in a designated place so that your sample maker can easily review them without scrutinizing every page to find the updated information. This designated place is usually the sample evaluation pages or a fit history page. Having revision notes compiled in one place will save you time if any confusion arises between you and your vendors, and hopefully help avoid confusion occurring in the first place.
Process
Tech packs support your company as it expands and help create structure and procedure. Having tech packs facilitates team collaboration on a product since the team members have easy access to the same information. How you use your tech pack also helps systematize your approval process and track progress through the stages of approval. You can build status indicators into your tech pack, such as an "approved for production" label to indicate that a style has completed the development process.
Production contract
In addition to your production contract, a tech pack contributes to your legal agreement with your manufacturer. A tech pack is a style-specific document that defines what you approved for production. Your contract should include information about the factory's requirement to follow the tech pack in production, thereby making the tech pack integral to the contractual relationship. Your contract should also define what happens if the factory fails to follow your tech pack. There should be agreed-upon consequences if your factory does not uphold its responsibilities. A tech pack helps define expectations and assign responsibilities.
Quality assurance
A production delivery should be checked upon receipt to verify that the quality and quantity of the goods match what was ordered. A tech pack helps you evaluate the delivered product for compliance with what you approved for production. The tech pack (and any other contractual documents) define what is acceptable. When mass producing, it is necessary to define tolerances, which are the amount of allowable variation from your specifications, because it is impossible for the factory to always meet the specifications perfectly. Defining your tolerances in your tech pack helps you minimize the amount of variation and ensure that your product sizes do not overlap. Establishing tolerances enables you to set up policies in your contract for what happens when products are received with dimensions (or other quality control metrics) out of tolerance.
Production
If your brand consistently produces the same style long term, you can record any "rolling" changes made between production orders in your tech pack. You can think of this like a change log where you note the requested revision and the first PO or cut number where the change took effect. If your products have long life cycles, keeping track of minor modifications over the life of the style will help you assess your situation if you ever find yourself with mixed stock and need to trace the history of changes made. The benefit of recording this information in a tech pack, instead of somewhere else, is that you will have a single location to look for information regarding a specific product.
Moving production
Having rights to your technical design documents helps you move your product to a new manufacturer. If you ever need to transition to a new factory, a tech pack will ease the transition, helping in many of the same ways as during the original development. Most development stages need to be revisited and reworked when sourcing a new factory. The tech pack helps reduce that rework, speeding up the sourcing process. Unforeseeable events can send brands scrambling to find a new factory at a moment's notice, but having a tech pack helps you be prepared in case such an event occurs. A tech pack enables you to pivot quickly if the need arises.
Multi-sourcing
Having rights to your technical design documents helps you produce your product through multiple manufacturers. If your manufacturers use different materials, you'll want to have those materials noted in your BOM and approved separately for each vendor. When sourcing the same product from multiple factories, one of the biggest concerns is keeping quality consistent regardless of your production source. A tech pack helps align quality and organize information across different suppliers.
Worth the investment
Tech packs help you move your design through the development process in an efficient way that prevents common pitfalls. A tech pack is an upstream investment that can save time, money, and frustration downstream by avoiding missteps and miscommunication.
Have your tech packs made by Clotheswright
Are there any areas in your business where a well-built tech pack would help? I offer custom-created tech packs made specifically for you. I'd love to chat with you to learn about your needs and how I can help.