Sourcing
A founder-to-founder walkthrough of finding a factory that can actually make your product: what to have ready, where to look, how to vet, and how to get a real quote without burning three rounds of email.
Most founders start by emailing a few factories with some version of 'how much for 100 hoodies.' The replies are slow, vague, or nonexistent, and it feels like manufacturers are ignoring small brands. They are not. They are triaging. A factory fields dozens of inquiries a week, and the ones that get a fast, real number back are the ones that arrive complete.
Before you reach out, get the following in hand: the garment type and a reference sample or product you want to match, fabric weight and composition, your target quantity and size range, the colorways you plan to run, the key construction details (seams, closures, finishing), and any labels, trims, or packaging you need. Add a target landed cost per unit and a rough timeline. None of this has to be perfect, but every gap you leave is a question the factory has to ask before it can price the job.
The pattern is simple. Concrete inputs get concrete quotes. A one-line description gets a one-line brush-off, or a number so padded with unknowns that it is useless for planning. If you are still deciding what your product actually is, that work comes first, and our tech pack guide walks through how to define it.
The single fastest way to get quoted, sampled, and into production is to hand a factory a complete, factory-ready tech pack. A tech pack is the spec a manufacturer builds from: technical flats, a bill of materials (every fabric, trim, and thread), points of measure across your size range, construction and stitch details, colorways, and labeling and packaging notes. It is the shared language between you and the sewing floor.
Factories quote from tech packs, not from descriptions. When the spec is complete, a factory can price materials and labor accurately, cut a sample that matches your intent, and skip the rounds of 'what did you mean by this' that stretch a timeline by weeks. When it is missing, the factory either guesses (and you pay for the guess in bad samples) or stops to ask, and every question is another few days lost. Our guide to sending a tech pack to a manufacturer covers how to package it for the first email.
Building a factory-ready tech pack by hand, across Illustrator, spreadsheets, and email, is where most of the pre-production time goes. Silhouet's AI tech pack generator drafts the spec, BOM, measurements, and construction from your sketch and your Shopify product data. You review and accept every field, so nothing is written without your confirmation, and a factory-readiness check reads the pack the way a factory would and flags what is still missing before you send. You walk into the conversation with the exact document a manufacturer needs to quote.
Once you know what you are making and have a spec to show, the search itself runs on four channels. Directories are the obvious start: Maker's Row and Sewport for domestic cut-and-sew, Sqetch and Kompass for a wider net, and Alibaba for overseas (with the vetting caution below). The mechanics of how to find apparel manufacturers are the same whether you make tees or tailored coats: search by product specialty, not just 'clothing manufacturers,' because a factory that sews knit tees is the wrong shop for structured outerwear.
Referrals beat directories. Other founders in your category, your fabric supplier, pattern makers, and technical designers all know which factories actually deliver, and a warm introduction moves you up the queue. Fashion founder communities, trade shows (Texworld and Kingpins for fabric, regional apparel sourcing events for factories), and even asking a brand you admire who they use will surface names no directory lists.
If you want to keep production close, the garment districts still matter. Los Angeles and New York carry the deepest domestic cut-and-sew capacity, with growing clusters in North Carolina and other regional pockets, which is where most searches for how to find clothing manufacturers in the USA should start. Going overseas usually means working through a sourcing agent or a sampling house rather than cold-emailing a factory directly. Materials are a separate hunt: our guide to finding a fabric supplier covers sourcing the cloth before the factory that sews it, and our low-MOQ USA manufacturers guide lists where small brands actually get made.
The domestic-versus-overseas decision usually comes down to minimum order quantity, unit cost, and how much friction you can absorb. As a rough map of MOQs per style and color: domestic factories often start around 50 to 100 units, premium small-batch producers in places like Portugal and Turkey tend to sit at 100 to 300, and larger factories in China or Vietnam commonly want 200 to 500 or more.
Domestic costs more per unit but lets you order less, reorder faster, communicate in your timezone, and stay close to quality and your intellectual property. Overseas wins on unit cost at volume, but you commit to higher MOQs, longer lead times, freight and duties, and slower feedback loops when a sample comes back off. For a first run, most small brands are better served by the lower MOQ and tighter loop of a domestic or premium small-batch factory, then reassess once a style proves itself. Our domestic-versus-overseas manufacturing guide breaks the tradeoffs down number by number.
Factories work in a few different models, and knowing which one you need saves everyone time. Cut-and-sew (also called CMT, for cut-make-trim) means you supply the patterns and often the materials, and the factory cuts and sews to your spec. It gives you the most control and a fully custom product, and it asks the most of you operationally.
Private label (or white label) is the opposite end: you choose from a factory's existing blank styles and add your branding, labels, and finishing. It is the fastest and cheapest way to launch, with the least control over fit and materials. Full-package production (FPP, sometimes quoted as FOB) sits in the middle, where the factory sources materials and produces the finished garment from your tech pack. It is the model most growing brands settle into, because it offloads sourcing while keeping the product yours.
Which one you need depends on how custom your product is and how much of the sourcing and pattern work you can carry. A distinctive silhouette in a specific fabric needs cut-and-sew or full-package. A branded basic can start on private label and move to cut-and-sew once the design earns the investment.
A trading company is a middleman that takes your order, marks it up, and farms the actual sewing out to a factory you never see. Some are legitimate and useful, especially overseas, but many small brands end up paying more for less accountability without realizing they never hired a factory at all. The red flags are consistent: they will not tell you where the garments are actually made or show you the floor, they are vague about which products they specialize in, their price comes in suspiciously low, and they dodge direct questions about who does the cutting and sewing.
To vet a factory, confirm the specialization match first (they regularly make your product type, not just 'apparel'), then order a sample and judge the construction against your spec. Ask for references from brands at your size, confirm their capacity and lead times are realistic, and pay attention to how responsive and specific they are before you have handed over any money, because that is the best preview of the relationship. If you need compliance certifications or specific fabrics, ask up front. Our guide to vetting a clothing manufacturer has a full checklist and the questions that separate a real factory from a reseller.
MOQ is where new-brand plans meet reality, and it is the number that most separates clothing manufacturers that work for a small business from the ones that do not. Minimums are set per style and per color, so five colorways of one hoodie is five separate minimums, not one. Using the ranges above, expect roughly 50 to 100 units domestically, 100 to 300 at premium small-batch producers, and 200 to 500 or more overseas, each multiplied by the number of colorways you insist on running.
A sane way to size runs when you are still learning what sells is to tier by confidence: around 100 units to test a new style, about 200 once you have signal that it works, and 300 to 500 on a proven style you are reordering. To keep minimums manageable, cut the number of colorways, share a fabric across multiple styles so you hit its minimum faster, and prioritize factories and sampling houses that specialize in small runs. Our low-MOQ USA manufacturers guide is a starting list.
The hardest part of the MOQ question is not the first run, it is the second. Silhouet's repurchase and reorder insight shows which core styles are actually selling through, so you restock the winners with confidence and skip the colorways that became dead stock. Sizing the next run from real sell-through, rather than a guess, is how a small brand grows order quantities without gambling working capital.
Your first email to a factory is a filter, and a strong one gets a reply within a day. Keep it short and specific: one line on who you are and your brand, a two-line product summary, and your tech pack attached. Then state your target quantity, your target price per unit, and your timeline, and ask the questions that actually matter: their MOQ for this product, lead time for samples and bulk, sample cost, price at a couple of quantity tiers, and payment terms.
What you are avoiding is the open-ended 'can you make hoodies,' which forces the factory to either ignore you or ask for everything you already could have sent. A complete first message, tech pack included, often collapses what would have been three or four back-and-forth rounds into one. Our guide to sending a tech pack to a manufacturer has a full email template and RFQ structure.
This is also where Silhouet's factory-readiness check earns its keep. It reads your tech pack the way a factory would and flags the gaps a manufacturer would otherwise write back to ask about, so the version you attach is the version that gets quoted, not the version that starts another email thread.
Budgeting for a manufacturer means understanding where the money in a garment goes. On a per-unit basis, fabric usually runs 40 to 60 percent of production cost, labor 20 to 30 percent, fulfillment (3PL) 5 to 15 percent, sampling 5 to 10 percent, and packaging 5 to 8 percent. Materials, once you add trims, are the largest and most cost-sensitive line, commonly 60 to 70 percent of the total, which is why fabric choice moves your margin more than almost anything else.
A full bulk production run, MOQ multiplied by unit cost, typically lands somewhere between $20,000 and $80,000 depending on your product, fabric, and quantity. That is the number to plan working capital around, and it is separate from the costs of getting to production: sampling rounds, a tech pack (freelance technical designers charge per style, and the range moves with garment complexity), and, if you use one, a sourcing agent whose fee usually runs 3 to 10 percent of the order.
Overseas, add freight and duties, and expect deposit terms (a 50 percent deposit with the balance before shipping is common). None of these numbers should surprise you at invoice time. The founders who manage cash well are the ones who priced the whole path, from first sample to landed inventory, before committing to a factory.
You can start conversations without one, but you will not get an accurate quote or a good sample without it. A factory prices materials and labor from the spec, so a plain description gets you a padded guess at best. Having a complete tech pack ready before you reach out is the single biggest factor in getting quoted fast and sampling right the first time.
Plan for weeks, not days. Sourcing and shortlisting factories takes a few weeks, sampling adds several more (often a few rounds), and bulk production lead times run anywhere from four to twelve-plus weeks depending on domestic versus overseas. From first outreach to finished inventory, a realistic timeline is a few months, which is why starting with a complete spec to compress the sampling phase matters so much.
Yes. Focus on domestic or premium small-batch factories with lower minimums (often 50 to 300 units per style), keep your colorway count down, and share a fabric across styles to hit minimums faster. Expect a full first run to cost roughly $20,000 to $80,000, so budget for the production run plus sampling and tech pack costs before you commit.
Ask directly where the garments are made and to see the production floor, confirm they specialize in your product type, and order a sample to judge construction. Trading companies tend to be vague about location, dodge questions about who does the sewing, and quote prices that look too good. A clear specialization match and a solid sample are the clearest signals of a real factory.
For most first runs, domestic or premium small-batch wins, because the lower minimums (roughly 50 to 300 units per style) and faster feedback loops let you test a style without overcommitting cash. Overseas becomes more attractive once a product is proven and you can absorb higher MOQs, longer lead times, and freight and duties in exchange for a lower unit cost at volume.
Reach out to five to ten that specialize in your product type, so you can compare quotes, lead times, and sample quality without spreading yourself too thin. Sending the same complete tech pack to each keeps the comparison apples-to-apples and makes it obvious which factory actually understood your product.
Generate a factory-ready tech pack free before you reach out, so the spec, BOM, and measurements a manufacturer needs are in hand from the first email. Request beta access to start.