How to Make a Tech Pack, Step by Step

What You Are Building and Why It Matters

A tech pack is the instruction manual for one garment style. Everything the factory needs to cut, sew, finish and pack your product should be in it, so that two different factories reading the same pack would produce near-identical garments. If you want the conceptual background first, read our companion page on what a tech pack is; this guide assumes you are ready to build one.

You do not need expensive software. Adobe Illustrator is the industry standard for flats, but a first tech pack can be assembled in a spreadsheet plus a drawing tool, or in a dedicated tech pack application. What matters is completeness and clarity, not polish.

Work style by style. A hoodie, a tee and a cap each get their own pack. Plan on six to twelve pages per style, and expect your first one to take a day or more; the second will be much faster because you will reuse the structure.

Step 1: Cover Page and Style Header

Start with a header block that appears on every page: brand name, style name and style number, season, date, version number and your contact details. The style number matters more than it seems; factories, trim suppliers and freight documents will all reference it, so pick a simple convention such as brand initials plus season plus a sequence number and stick to it.

The cover page itself carries a front and back image of the design, the size range you intend to offer, the base size for sampling, and a one-line garment description such as heavyweight oversized hoodie in 450 gsm brushed fleece. Add the target fabric and the colourways you plan to run.

Include a revision table on the cover: version, date, and what changed. When you update the pack after a sample round, you increment the version and log the change. This single habit prevents the most common tech pack disaster, which is a factory sewing bulk from an outdated file.

Step 2: Technical Flats

Flats are flat, two-dimensional line drawings of the garment, front and back, drawn as if the garment were laid on a table. They are not fashion illustrations; no body, no shading, no artistic angles. Draw them in vector so the factory can zoom in without losing detail.

Show every seam as a line and every topstitch as a dashed line. Add close-up detail views for anything the main flat cannot show clearly: cuff construction, hood interior, pocket bag, zip garage. If a detail matters to you, draw it; if you do not draw it, the factory will default to whatever is fastest.

Annotate the flats with callouts pointing to specific features: 2 cm rib cuff, flatlock side seam, bar tack at pocket corners. Keep annotations short and factual. Ambiguity here becomes a phone call later or, worse, a wrong sample.

Step 3: Bill of Materials

The bill of materials, or BOM, is a table listing every physical component in the garment: shell fabric, rib, lining, sewing thread, main label, care label, zips, drawcords, eyelets, hangtag, polybag. One row per component.

For each row record the component name, a description with technical details such as composition and weight, the colour with a Pantone reference, the supplier if you have one, the placement on the garment, and the quantity per garment. For fabric, quantity is consumption in metres or kilograms; your manufacturer will confirm exact consumption after pattern making, so an estimate is fine at first.

A hypothetical example row: component rib knit, description 2x2 rib 95 percent cotton 5 percent elastane 350 gsm, colour Pantone 19-4005 TCX, placement cuffs and hem, quantity approximately 0.15 kg. Write every row to that standard and the BOM is done.

Step 4: Measurement Spec and Grading

The measurement spec, or points of measure table, defines the finished garment dimensions in your base size. List each point of measure with a code, a plain description of how to measure it, the target value in centimetres, and a tolerance. Typical points for a tee include chest width 2.5 cm below armhole, body length from high point shoulder, shoulder to shoulder, sleeve length, armhole depth, neck opening and hem width.

The most reliable way to build this table is to measure a garment you already own that fits the way you want, then adjust. State how each measurement is taken, for example chest measured flat 2.5 cm below the armhole, because measuring methods differ between factories and an undefined method makes the number meaningless.

Grading is the set of rules for scaling the base size up and down. For each point of measure, state the increment between sizes, for example chest plus 5 cm per size, body length plus 2 cm per size. Standard grading increments work for most casualwear; if your brand has an unusual fit philosophy, spell it out. Add a tolerance column, commonly plus or minus 1 cm on major widths and lengths and 0.5 cm on small measures, since these tolerances become your acceptance criteria at quality control.

Step 5: Construction Notes and Stitch Details

The construction page tells the factory how the garment goes together: which seam types, which stitches and where. You do not need to be a sewing engineer; naming the seams that matter to you is enough. Common callouts include overlocked seams, flatlock seams on activewear, coverstitched hems, twin needle topstitching, and bar tacks at stress points.

Specify stitch density if durability matters to your product, expressed as stitches per centimetre or per inch, and note any reinforcement such as neck tape, shoulder-to-shoulder taping or half-moon back neck panels. State thread colour logic too, for example thread matches body colour on all seams, contrast thread on hem only.

Include finishing instructions on this page: how the garment is pressed, folded and bagged, what sticker goes on the polybag, and how many pieces per carton. Factories genuinely follow these notes, and unfolded or badly folded stock is a real cost when it reaches your warehouse.

Step 6: Print and Embellishment Placements

Every print, embroidery or applique gets a placement page. Show the artwork on the flat, then dimension it: width of the print in centimetres, distance from a fixed reference point such as the collar seam or centre front, and the placement method, for example centred 7 cm below back neck seam.

State the decoration technique for each placement: screen print, DTG, heat transfer, puff print, embroidery. Note the number of colours with Pantone references and any special effects. Attach or link the production-ready artwork files in vector format, at actual size where possible.

If a placement scales with garment size, say so explicitly, for example print width grows 1 cm per size above L, or state that the print is one size across the range. This is a detail factories frequently ask about, and answering it in the pack saves a sampling round.

Version Control and Common Mistakes

Treat the tech pack as a living document. After each sample round, update the measurements, notes and artwork to reflect agreed changes, increment the version number, and resend the whole pack rather than emailing fragments. The factory should always be able to name the single current version.

The most common mistakes we see are missing tolerances, flats that hide construction behind artistic rendering, BOMs without Pantone references, measurement specs with no method descriptions, and packs that were never updated after sampling. Each of these reliably produces a wrong sample or a disputed inspection.

Before sending, run a simple completeness check: could a stranger with no access to you cut and sew this garment from the document alone? If any question would force them to guess, answer it in the pack.

• Header with style number and version on every page
• Front and back flats with detail callouts
• BOM with one row per component and Pantone colours
• Measurement spec with methods, grading and tolerances
• Construction, finishing and packing notes
• Dimensioned placement pages with production artwork