With more than 15 years working in the Fashion Industry, Carlos is the Co-founder and CEO of GAT Fashion Lab.
Traditionally, clothing manufacturing refers to the large factories that offer tolling services, which only include sewing and in some cases, cutting services. In this traditional service, the customer must provide all the raw materials, including cut pieces, physical samples, and manufacturing guidelines. These factories are typically used by larger brands because they have many operators and specialize in delivering large orders of over 10,000 units per design.
On the other hand, small manufacturers that specialize in sewing are smaller factories with 5-30 people and often specialize in certain types of garments, such as t-shirts, dresses, polos, and jeans. These manufacturers are also commonly used by fashion brands to expand their production capacity, with a capacity of 1,000 to 10,000 units per design. They also require cut pieces, raw materials, and detailed instructions to operate.
The Full Package clothing manufacturers are an evolution of traditional clothing manufacturers and the main difference is that they include design teams, can create samples, source raw materials, and act as a third-party design provider for various customers.
The main advantage of Full Package Manufacturers is that they can manage the entire fashion collection supply chain independently of the customer. The usual process is that the Full Package company creates designs and collections and presents them to customers, who can then choose to buy the entire manufacturing process. This is cost-efficient because they only pay for the finished product and don't have to use their production capacity.
Full Package manufacturers are used by both big and small brands. For big brands, it is a good solution because Full Package companies are faster than the brands, as big companies have slow processes, while Full Package companies can move faster from design to manufacturing. Smaller brands commonly use Full Package Manufacturers because they have the knowledge and experience to manage the entire supply chain, as clothing manufacturing is known to be a complex process with common issues that can lead to financial losses.
Some Full Package manufacturers can also operate as traditional manufacturers, which is a good option because they have specialized teams and knowledge that traditional manufacturers don't have.
If you are looking for clothing manufacturers for your fashion company, we recommend reading this blog post about the best tips for choosing clothing manufacturers for your fashion brand.
At GAT Fashion Lab, we are Full Package clothing manufacturers. We have been working with some of the largest fashion retailers in Latin America for 15 years and specialize in women's tops design and manufacturing. If you want to learn more about our process, check this out, and if you want to learn more about Full Package Clothing Manufacture, read this.
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