A technical pack—or tech pack—serves as the legal and architectural contract between an apparel brand and a clothing factory. Without a clear tech pack, factory pattern-makers are forced to guess measurements, resulting in multiple sampling iterations, delayed production schedules, and blown budgets.
Core Components of a Production-Ready Tech Pack
To ensure seamless pattern drafting and pre-production sampling, your tech pack should include the following core sections:
- Technical Flat Sketches: Black and white line drawings showing front, back, and interior construction details. Avoid artistic fashion illustrations; focus on seam placement, pocket openings, and topstitch lines.
- Bill of Materials (BOM): A complete itemization of all fabrics, lining materials, ribbing, zipper types, drawstrings, eyelets, neck tape, care labels, and hang tags.
- Point of Measure (POM) Table: A comprehensive specification sheet listing measurements for chest width, body length, shoulder drop, sleeve length, bicep, neck opening, and cuff ribbing.
- Size Grading Rules: Mathematical increments for grading up and down from your base size (typically Medium) across XS, S, L, XL, and XXL.
- Artwork & Decoration Placement: Exact dimensional placement (e.g., “centered 8cm below the front collar seam”) with Pantone Solid Coated reference codes.
Common Tech Pack Mistakes to Avoid
Our engineering team regularly reviews customer tech packs. The most common errors include:
- Omitting seam-to-seam tolerances (+/- 1.5 cm is industry standard for heavy knits).
- Using CMYK or RGB color values instead of standardized Pantone Coated codes.
- Failing to specify ribbing relaxation state (flat measurement vs. stretched tension).
- Using reference photographs of other brands without providing specific dimensions.
Sampling & Prototyping at Rastify Gears
Once we receive your tech pack through the Start Building inquiry portal, our pattern team creates digital CAD patterns and cuts a pre-production sample. We photograph, measure against your POM sheet, and dispatch the prototype directly to your studio for fit evaluation.
