To sew or not to sew – that is the question!

After reading the following text, you will learn things that would take many hours of research on your own, and very likely cost you a lot of money and nerves as well. The text is based on years of knowledge and experience in the garment printing industry, performed for smaller and larger apparel brands. It will not be an exaggeration to say that the following text is unique.

Many people, after deciding to prove themselves in the field of their clothing brand, think of “self-sewing” their shirts and sweatshirts through a sewing room, and then outsourcing the printing to a printing company. This is one option, but it turns out that in many cases it is not the best at all. A much cheaper alternative is to use off-the-shelf solutions, which, in addition to the lower price, have many other advantages, especially important with just starting out or young brands.

When deciding to sew in a sewing room, it’s worth being aware of the challenges that await you in the first place:

Good sewing room – does it even exist? 🙂

Already this first stage will be quite a challenge. Let’s put it this way: maybe you’ll be incredibly lucky and get to a seamstress that delivers exactly what you had in mind when you placed your order the first time. Most people are not so lucky. Of course, good sewing shops with easy and straightforward contact (throughout the order process) exist somewhere, but finding them is a lengthy and expensive process that can be financially and nerve-wracking. It turns out that the best sewing shops may not even have a website.

Properly prepared design

The undoubted advantage of a sewing room is the ability to sew clothes perfectly tailored according to our concept. The problem is that, as with everything, you need to know how to do it right. 🙂 Visualization is not a prepared design, it is just a visualization.

In the sewing room, the actual design is done by a garment designer working in the cutting room.

The garment constructor, as the name suggests, prepares the garment construction, that is, he physically makes for each ordered product the parts (blanks) of which the product is composed. He takes into account the proportions of the human body and gives the appropriate cut. So that, for example, a sleeve composed of a single piece of material fits into the armhole of a T-shirt.

Preparation of the design of blanks, that is, vectors from which the blanks will be created taking into account every detail of the sewn garment. To do this properly, you need to be familiar with it or pay a sewing shop to sew a prototype (about PLN 250 net for a T-shirt, about PLN 500 for a sweatshirt).

Size grading – you can do it yourself (if you are familiar with it) or pay a sewing shop to make it (another about 350 PLN net per size)

In addition to the design itself, the success or failure of your brand may also be determined by such aspects as:

Costs – sewing room vs. ready-made garments

There is no denying that, especially for a clothing brand just starting out, one of the main aspects of the business is costs. It’s worth looking at the facts in this context as well, because the numbers speak for themselves. Example prices for an order of 50 shirts without printing:

T-SHIRTS IN THE SEWING ROOM	GRAMATURE	WHOLESALE T-SHIRTS
28,00 zł	160 g	18,00 zł
31,00 zł	180 g	21,00 zł
33,00 zł	200 g	23,00 zł

Net prices

Why are ready-made T-shirts cheaper?

It is certainly not a question of quality. It’s just an effect of scale. It is ordered in huge quantities, and thus can be much cheaper. Write an email to a sewing shop with a request for 100,000 pieces. In response, you will get a price similar to that offered by manufacturers of finished garments.

Lead times

Lead times are especially important for at least these three reasons:

quick domiciliation of missing goods – in case you sew in a sewing room, the lead time is from 20 working days depending on the season. Of course, this is assuming that everything goes without any delays.
On top of that, there is the additional time to transfer the goods to the company doing the printing. If you order a ready-made garment, the time in which you will receive the garment is 5-10 working days. You can also replenish missing goods incomparably faster, which will translate into higher sales, satisfaction of your customers and fewer headaches with answering questions about missing sizes.
it’s important that the finished garment is exactly the same garment you ordered the first time, because the last thing you want is inconsistent sizing and quality

Labeling

If you want to use your own labels (jacquard, sublimation or printed), you can also apply them to finished garments. Labeling is a cost of 3 to 7 zlotys, depending on the type of labels used. Alternatively, no-label brands are prepared specifically for use as branded garments. Their quality is uncompromising.

The quality of well-selected finished garments is so high that many manufacturers of licensed T-shirts of world-famous brands (Star Wars, Marvel, DC, Blizzard) use labeling.

Minimum order

In the case of ready-made garments, you can buy up to 1 piece of a T-shirt or sweatshirt on hand. On the other hand, when ordering garments from a sewing shop, the minimum is about 20 pieces of shirts of one size.

What do you do if you run out of a design in just one size, and it’s unprofitable to sew it in that quantity?

Proper design and execution of printing

This is a river topic for at least 3 separate articles:

Summary

To be clear: there are cases when sewing your own clothes in a sewing room is the right solution. This is for established brands with high sales, financial capabilities and a proven sewing room.

For new brands, sewing their own clothes can be their beginning of the end. It is wiser to allocate this time and financial resources to other aspects of the business. Which ones? I described them in detail in the guide How to create your own clothing brand – step by step.

As an alternative to sewing clothes yourself, there are ready-made products in a huge array of cuts, weights, colors. Finding the right sweatshirts and T-shirts in this thicket is also a task to perform, but incomparably easier and cheaper than sewing in a sewing room.

In addition, we make this task easier by selecting proven and highly recommended clothing.

If you have an idea for your own clothing brand, which you want to test quietly without charging yourself with huge costs and nerves, then using ready-made clothing and its proper customization are the most apt answer to your needs.