Custom Knitwear Development
Custom Knitwear Development
A tech pack is the document that tells a factory exactly how to build your garment. For a cashmere sweater it must state yarn composition and count, machine gauge, knit structure, a full measurement chart with tolerances, colourways, trims, label placement and packaging. Get it right and the first sample is close enough to approve with comments. Get it wrong and the factory fills the gaps with assumptions — which is where most sampling rounds and most delays come from.
What is the difference between a tech pack and a spec sheet?
A spec sheet is the measurement page. A tech pack is everything around it. The spec sheet holds points of measure, size grading and tolerances, usually one to three pages. The tech pack adds the technical flats, bill of materials, yarn and gauge specification, construction callouts, colourways, label placement, packaging and a revision history. Every tech pack contains a spec sheet; a spec sheet on its own is not a tech pack.
| Spec sheet | Tech pack | |
|---|---|---|
| Length | 1–3 pages | 8–30 pages |
| Contains | Measurements, grading, tolerances | Flats, BOM, yarn and gauge, construction, colourways, labels, packaging, revisions |
| Used for | QC checks during bulk | Quoting, pattern making, sampling and bulk execution |
| Enough when | Repeat style, factory already knows your standards | New style, new factory, or any complexity |
The practical rule: if you are reordering a style the factory has made for you before, a spec sheet is fine. If you are opening a new style, a new factory or a new market, the full pack is not optional — it is the thing that makes the quote comparable between suppliers.
Why a cut-and-sew tech pack fails on a flat-bed knitting machine
Because knitwear is an additive process. In woven production the fabric exists first and the shape is cut out of it, so a measurement is simply a cutting instruction. On a flat-bed knitting machine the fabric and the shape are generated together: the machine knits row by row and adds or removes needles at the armhole and neckline to follow the body contour. A measurement is therefore a stitch count and a course count, not a cut line.
This has a concrete consequence for your document. If your tech pack says "chest width 52 cm" and nothing else, an experienced factory will reverse-engineer the needle count from your gauge, your yarn and a control swatch — and an inexperienced one will guess. Either way you have handed over a decision that was yours to make. Three additions fix it:
- State the gauge (for example 12GG) so the factory knows the needle pitch the stitch counts are based on. If you are not sure what gauge means or which one suits your price point, our guide to gauge, needles and knit density walks through the full 3GG–18GG range.
- State the yarn count alongside the gauge. Gauge and count are a pair; 12GG with 2/28Nm behaves nothing like 12GG with 2/48Nm. Our yarn count explainer covers how Nm works and what each count is used for.
- State whether measurements are taken relaxed or under tension — and say it in words on the page, not in an email.
Why this matters commercially: a knitwear spec that reads like a woven spec is the single most common reason a first sample comes back the wrong weight. The factory builds to the cheapest interpretation that satisfies the numbers, and the cheapest interpretation of an underspecified sweater is a lighter one.
The eight pages your cashmere tech pack needs
Eight pages cover a knitwear style completely. Published guidance puts a simple knit basic at eight to twelve pages and complex pieces at twenty to thirty; the test is completeness rather than length. If you have already read our eight customization decisions, these pages are simply those eight decisions expanded into document form.
| # | Page | Must contain | If you skip it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cover and style summary | Style name and number, season, size range, current revision date | Two people build two different versions |
| 2 | Technical flats | Front, back and side line drawings with seam and stitch lines — not mood photos | Construction is interpreted from a photo |
| 3 | Yarn and gauge | Fibre content, micron, yarn count (Nm), ply, machine gauge | Cost and handfeel both float |
| 4 | Knit structure and construction | Stitch allocation (jersey body, rib trims, jacquard panel), shoulder type, linking method | Quality tier silently drops |
| 5 | Measurement chart | Every point of measure, graded across all sizes, with tolerance per point | No objective QC standard exists |
| 6 | Colourways | Pantone reference or physical yarn swatch for every component | "Navy" reads differently to every dyer |
| 7 | Trims and labels | Buttons, zippers, main label, care label, origin, hangtag — with placement measured from a fixed edge | Labels land in the wrong place in bulk |
| 8 | Packaging and packing | Fold method, polybag, tissue, carton specification, ratio per carton | Finishing cannot be quoted accurately |
Yarn and gauge: the two lines that set your cost
Gauge and yarn count together determine your garment weight, and garment weight is most of your yarn cost. This is why page three of the tech pack is the one your buyer should read most carefully. The pairing is not free-form: each gauge band has a yarn-count range and a resulting finished weight.
| Machine gauge | Typical finished weight | Yarn count | What it is used for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3GG–5GG (heavy) | 400–600 g | 2/3Nm–2/5Nm, multi-ply | Chunky cables, oversized winter cardigans |
| 7GG–9GG (mid) | 250–400 g | 2/15Nm–2/28Nm | Classic crew necks, textured jacquards, all-season pullovers |
| 12GG–14GG (fine) | 150–250 g | 2/30Nm–2/48Nm | Fine-gauge layering pieces, lightweight luxury knits |
| 16GG–18GG (ultra-fine) | 100–180 g | 2/60Nm and finer | Premium base layers, high-end fine knits |
A quick sanity check when a quote arrives: if you specified 12GG with 2/28Nm and the sample weighs 380 g, something is wrong. Either the gauge ran coarser than specified, the yarn was substituted, or the silhouette grew. Catch that at the proto stage and it costs one sampling round. Catch it in bulk and it costs the season.
How much yarn will your sweater actually use?
Yarn consumption is calculable before the first sample, and you should ask for the number in the tech pack. The standard approach is to knit and finish a control swatch, weigh it, and scale by garment area:
Yarn weight (g) = (garment area in dm² × fabric weight in g/dm²) ÷ (1 − waste %)
The waste figure is where factories differ and where quotes diverge. For fully fashioned knitwear, a realistic total waste allowance is 8–12%, built from machine and process loss (1.5–3.5% on cones, threading and tie-offs), sampling and testing consumption (0.5–2%), and overfeed in finishing such as raising or fulling (2–7%). Wool and cashmere also carry shrinkage that has to be planned into the knit dimensions rather than corrected afterwards — finishing allowances of 5–8% in both length and width are normal.
Worked example for a size-M fine-gauge crew neck at 180 g:
| Line | Calculation | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Finished garment weight | — | 180 g |
| Yarn purchased per unit | 180 g ÷ (1 − 0.10 waste) | ≈ 200 g |
| Yarn cost at Grade-A price of $115/kg | 0.20 kg × $115 | ≈ $23.00 |
| With SFA or RCS certification multiplier (×1.10–1.15) | $23.00 × 1.10–1.15 | ≈ $25.30–$26.45 |
That is yarn alone, before knitting, linking, finishing, trims or packing. It is also the single fastest way to understand why two factories quote 30% apart on what sounds like the same sweater: one of them is buying a different grade of fibre. Our Grade A vs Grade B breakdown explains what the difference is measured in, and our wholesale cost anatomy takes the full build-up further.
The measurement page is where tech packs fail
Most tech packs fail on tolerance and on method, not on missing numbers. "Body length about 70 cm" is not a specification — it is a hope. The same line written for production looks like this:
| Element | Vague version | Production-ready version |
|---|---|---|
| POM name | Body length | Body length, CB (centre back) |
| Method | (none) | Measured flat, from base of back neck rib to bottom edge |
| Size M value | ~70 cm | 70.0 cm |
| Graded sizes | (none) | S 68 / M 70 / L 72 / XL 74 cm |
| Tolerance | (none) | ± 1.0 cm |
The points of measure a cashmere sweater needs at minimum: centre-back body length, chest width (1 cm below armhole), shoulder width, sleeve length from shoulder seam, sleeve length from centre back, cuff opening, hem rib depth, neck width, neck rib depth, armhole depth. Ten lines, and every one of them should carry a method sentence and a tolerance.
What tolerance should knitwear use?
Wider than wovens, and wider still as the gauge gets coarser. Published industry practice allows roughly ±0.5 cm for woven garments, about ±1.5 cm for mid-gauge knits at 7GG–12GG, and about ±2.0 cm for heavy-gauge 3GG–5GG constructions. Knitted fabric relaxes after steaming and stretches when hung, so a tighter tolerance than the construction can physically hold does not produce a better garment — it produces rejections, remakes and arguments at inspection.
| Construction | Common tolerance | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Woven garment | ± 0.5 cm | Stable, non-elastic fabric |
| Knitted, 7GG–12GG | ± 1.5 cm | Loop structure relaxes after wash and steam |
| Knitted, 3GG–5GG | ± 2.0 cm | Bulky yarn, coarser needle pitch, greater natural variance |
One more line worth writing explicitly: whether the measurement is taken on a relaxed garment or a garment under tension. The same sweater can measure 50 cm relaxed and 56 cm stretched, and both figures are "correct" until you say which one you meant.
Construction: write "fully fashioned, linked" or lose the quality signal
The seam is where cashmere quality is visible, and it is decided by one line in your tech pack. A linking seam joins two knitted panels by threading each stitch loop of both panels onto a circular linking machine and closing them with a single chain stitch. The result is flat, clean and free of bulk, overlap or raw edge, and it reads on the finished garment as a fine raised line at the shoulder and armhole.
A linking seam cannot be faked on a sewing machine — it needs a linking machine and a trained linking operator. That means it is a cost line, and if your tech pack does not ask for it, you will not get it. Three construction lines to write:
- Shaping method: fully fashioned (panels knitted to shape, loop-for-loop) or cut-and-sew (panels cut from knitted fabric). Fully fashioned costs more and produces cleaner edges and less wasted yarn; cut-and-sew is faster and cheaper and is what most mid-market knitwear is.
- Joining method: circular dial linking, overlock, or flatlock — specified per seam, not as a general note.
- Reinforcement: shoulder stabilisation tape on fine-gauge pieces, and defined attachment for buttons or plackets so a wash does not turn a straight placket into a wavy one.
Labels, care and compliance: the page that is legally binding
The care label is a legal document, not a design element. Fibre content, country of origin and care instructions are regulated in most destination markets, and cashmere content in particular is actively tested by customs and by market regulators. Your tech pack should list every label — main, care, origin, RN or registration number where required, and any tracking label your retailer demands — with its content and its placement measured from a fixed edge.
Two practical notes for cashmere specifically. First, the fibre percentage on the label has to match what was actually knitted, so if you approve a yarn substitution mid-programme, the label page changes in the same revision. Second, children's knitwear carries additional safety requirements in the US and EU, which is a document question rather than a knitting question — raise it before sampling, not before shipping.
Seven omissions that cost you a sampling round
These seven account for most failed first samples. Each one is cheap to fix on paper and expensive to fix in fabric.
- Only a front view. Factories need front, back, side and interior. A single view invites the factory to invent the back.
- No tolerances. Without them there is no pass/fail line, so the sample is judged by feel and the argument moves to the inspection table.
- No gauge specified. The single fastest way to receive a sweater of the wrong weight and the wrong price.
- Not saying relaxed or under tension. Half of all measurement disputes are actually definition disputes.
- Sending a reference garment instead of a pack. The factory cannot tell which measurements are your design intent and which are the result of the reference having stretched.
- Colour names instead of Pantone. "Oatmeal" is at least four different shades across mills. Give a Pantone number or a physical yarn swatch.
- Verbal or email changes. Instructions that never reach the document create a split record where the spec and the actual build disagree. Every change gets a new revision number and a new date on the cover.
Published estimates put sampling errors — most of them traceable to incomplete or ambiguous specifications — at 30–40% of product development delays. That is the number to keep in mind when you are deciding whether to spend another afternoon on page five.
Do you need a tech pack before you contact a factory?
No — and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you a document rather than a sweater. Plenty of emerging brands start with a reference garment, a sketch and the eight decisions written down. A capable ODM factory will develop the specification with you, and the clearer your inputs are, the faster and cheaper that development is.
What you cannot skip is the substance. A pack with gaps does not get you a faster quote; it gets you a quote built on assumptions, and then a sample built on the same assumptions. If you want to know how the sampling calendar runs once the pack is in hand, our week-by-week production timeline maps each stage, and our 12 questions to ask before you order covers the factory side of the same decision.
Ewsca insider note: We ask for a tech pack, and we expect to help write it. In practice roughly half the buyers who approach us arrive with a reference garment and a spreadsheet, not a finished pack — so our development team fills in the gaps on gauge, yarn count and construction during the first two calls, then issues a spec sheet back to the buyer for sign-off before anything is knitted. We would rather spend an hour on the phone than a week on a second sample, because a mismatched proto costs the buyer a sampling round and costs us a machine slot. Custom knitwear starts at 100 pieces per style and colour, sampling runs 7–14 days once yarn is in the building, and fibre is Inner Mongolian across 100+ computerized machines spanning 3GG to 14GG.
Ewsca is a custom cashmere knitwear manufacturer with 20+ years of experience, founded in the USA with its own factory in China. We develop custom sweaters, cardigans, kid's knitwear and home products from Inner Mongolian yarn — 100+ computerized flat-bed machines spanning 3GG to 14GG, 200+ new styles monthly, 100,000-piece monthly capacity, MOQ from 100 pcs per style and colour. Certified by BSCI, OEKO-TEX, INTERTEK, SFA and Organic EU. Every tech pack we receive is read against the same eight-page checklist in this article before sampling is scheduled.
Send what you have. We will tell you what is missing.
A sketch, a reference garment or a half-finished pack is enough to start. Our development team will review it against the eight pages above and come back with the gaps, yarn options, a sampling plan and a production calendar — before you commit to anything. MOQ from 100 pcs/style/color.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a tech pack for knitwear?
A tech pack is the document that tells a knitting factory exactly how to build your sweater. For knitwear it must state yarn composition and count, machine gauge, knit structure, a full measurement chart with tolerances, colourways, trims, labels and packaging. Unlike a woven tech pack, it has to give measurements in a relaxed state with knit-appropriate tolerances of about ±1.5 cm for mid-gauge and ±2.0 cm for heavy-gauge, because a knitted garment is an elastic system rather than a cut shape.
What is the difference between a tech pack and a spec sheet?
A spec sheet is the measurement page: points of measure, size grading and tolerances, usually one to three pages. A tech pack is the whole package around it, including technical flats, bill of materials, yarn and gauge specification, construction callouts, colourways, label placement, packaging and a revision history. Every tech pack contains a spec sheet, but a spec sheet on its own is not a tech pack and will not prevent sampling errors.
How many pages should a knitwear tech pack be?
A simple cashmere crew neck can be fully specified in eight to twelve pages, and a complex piece with multiple components or retailer-specific packaging may run twenty to thirty. The test is completeness, not length: every question a factory could ask about how to build the garment should be answered somewhere inside the document.
What measurement tolerance should I use for knitwear?
Published industry practice allows roughly ±0.5 cm for woven garments, about ±1.5 cm for mid-gauge knits (7GG to 12GG) and about ±2.0 cm for heavy-gauge knits (3GG to 5GG). Knitted fabric relaxes after steaming and moves when hung, so a tighter tolerance than the construction can physically hold only produces rejections rather than better fit.
Can I send a reference sample instead of a tech pack?
A reference garment is useful context but does not replace a tech pack. A factory cannot determine your yarn specification from a physical sample without lab testing, cannot tell which measurements are intentional and which are the result of the sample having stretched or shrunk, and has no documented standard to check bulk production against once the counter sample is approved.
Do I need a complete tech pack to get a quote from a cashmere factory?
No. You can start a conversation with a reference garment, a sketch and eight decisions written down. A capable ODM factory will help build the pack with you, and many emerging brands begin that way. What you cannot skip is the specification itself: an incomplete pack makes both the quote and the first sample inaccurate, and sampling errors account for an estimated 30 to 40 percent of product development delays.
Sources and further reading
- World Fashion Exchange — Tech Pack 101: Everything you need to know about fashion tech packs (nine core components, spec sheet vs tech pack, 30–40% delay estimate)
- Tobimax Textiles — What Is a Tech Pack? A Manufacturer's Guide for Brands (factory-ready checklist, tech pack vs spec sheet)
- MFG Merch — Tech Pack Creation: How To Make Tech Packs? (page counts, reference garments, version control)
- SML Intimate — How to Prepare a Tech Pack for Knitwear Manufacturing (knit-specific elements, tolerance practice, common startup errors)
- Licheng Knitwear — How to Prepare a Sweater Tech Pack (POM writing conventions, knitwear pack sections)
- JM Sweater — Knitwear Manufacturing Guide (gauge-to-yarn-count matching, knit tolerances by gauge, fully fashioned shaping and linking)
- GL Yarn — What is the Appropriate Usage of Wool Yarn? (yarn consumption formula, waste allowances, shrinkage and finishing overfeed)
- Sparkit Knitwear Encyclopedia — Grey V-Neck Sweater (yarn consumption by gauge, Grade-A cashmere pricing, certification multipliers, linking seam)
