What Goes in an Apparel Tech Pack — and When You Need One
By The Velocity Wear Team
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A tech pack is a written specification of everything about a garment — the blank, colours, decoration, placement, sizing and finishing details. For custom apparel ordered from stock blanks, you do not need a full manufacturing tech pack, but you do need a written spec, because it is what makes your second order match your first.
Two Different Things Called the Same Name
In cut-and-sew manufacturing, a tech pack is an extensive document specifying patterns, construction, grading, trims and tolerances for a garment being made from scratch. That is not what most custom apparel buyers need. If you are ordering existing blanks with your decoration applied, what you need is a specification sheet: a precise record of what was ordered so it can be ordered again identically.
What Your Specification Should Record
Everything that would change the outcome if it were different.
- The exact garment — brand, product code, colour name and code, fabric weight. Not 'black hoodie'.
- Decoration method for each element, since a design might combine embroidery and print.
- Logo dimensions and exact placement, measured from a fixed point such as the shoulder seam or the collar.
- Colour references as Pantone numbers for print and thread numbers for embroidery.
- Size spread ordered and any labelling, tagging or packaging specifics.
Why This Matters More Than It Sounds
The first order is easy — you are making every decision fresh and you remember them. The problem appears eighteen months later when a new starter needs a polo, or a club replaces lost kit, or a design reorders after a season. Without a written spec, those decisions are reconstructed from memory, and the result is a near-match: a logo a centimetre larger, a slightly different shade, a placement two centimetres higher. Worn side by side, that is immediately visible.
“"Write down what you ordered. Your future self, ordering the same thing in two years, will not remember any of it."”
When You Do Need a Full Tech Pack
If you are moving beyond decorated blanks into garments made to your own pattern — your own fit, your own construction, your own fabric — then a genuine manufacturing tech pack becomes necessary, along with the sampling and grading process that goes with it. That is a substantially bigger undertaking and a different stage of business. Most brands work with decorated blanks for a long time before it makes sense.
Building Yours
Start it with your first order rather than after your third. Record the specification as you make each decision, and update it if anything changes at the proofing stage — the spec should describe what was actually produced, not what was originally intended. Keep it somewhere that survives staff changes, because uniform orders in particular outlast the people who placed them.
Putting It Into Practice
Preview and confirm placement and scale in the free Design Studio before approving, then record the final figures. Orders start at 50 pieces with mixed sizes allowed, and bulk discounts reach up to around 35% as quantities rise. Production runs around 10–15 working days from artwork approval for screen printing and embroidery, plus 2–5 working days tracked UK delivery.
