You might look at garment production and think it is either one-off custom pieces or mass-produced bulk production. In reality, there is a whole spectrum of options in between for producing a customized clothing offering as a fashion brand. Each option requires a different amount of upfront development work and production time and offers a personalized, but slightly different experience to the customer. Let’s take a look.
The challenge of custom garment production
Traditional bulk production leverages the efficiency of cutting and sewing many garments at once by batching each step. Fabrics can be stacked and cut all at once. Machines can be threaded and set to sew one sewing step effortlessly all day. With custom garment production, though, you don’t have this bulk efficiency. Each garment is different and so has to be cut individually. You aren’t sewing multiples of the same thing which makes the production process for each garment more like that of a sample.
This is the challenge of custom garment production. It requires a different level of planning and coordination. If you want to offer custom garments within your brand, your development process and production set-up will look a bit different than a brand producing in bulk.
Why consider offering custom
Still, despite the challenges of custom garment production, it is an attractive option for many brands and customers alike. Every person is unique and it is impossible to design and fit one single garment that matches the personal taste, size, and proportions of every individual. Offering custom clothing opens up possibilities for customers to get the exact style and fit they are looking for.
This custom garment model also means that you as the brand aren’t investing in inventory that might never sell. You are only producing what has already been ordered by the customer. This on-demand production model eliminates garment waste and gets cash flowing into the business ahead of production expenses.
You’ll see a custom garment production model more often for higher-end, more tailored, and more formal styles, but more and more brands are offering custom options for everyday apparel as well. If you are considering offering custom garments, start by choosing what level of custom production makes sense for your business. This choice will inform how you prepare and set up your custom production for success.
Bespoke
Bespoke garments are made truly one of a kind. They aren’t existing styles or patterns that are just tweaked for a particular person’s measurements. Bespoke garments are designed and drafted just for a particular customer. This style may never be made again.
This is the highest-end of custom garments. The customer is highly involved in selecting the design, fabrics, and attending fittings throughout the process. Bespoke garment production is really more like samplemaking than bulk production in that the garment is more likely to be cut and sewn start to finish by one or two people rather than assembly line style by many people. Instead of working with a factory, you might work with a tailor or individual seamstress to produce the garment.
You need a custom pattern made for each new garment and an experienced patternmaker, technical designer, or tailor to conduct the fittings and make adjustments. You don’t get to leverage any efficiency on the pattern development or production side of things which makes bespoke garments costly to produce. Because they are also high quality and provide a luxury experience to the customer, they can be sold for a high price point.
Made-to-measure
Like bespoke garments, made-to-measure (MTM) is tailored to each individual customer’s measurements. What makes these two types of custom garment production different, though, is that MTM probably isn’t an exclusive design. You can develop block patterns and sizes for each style that can be altered to match each customer’s measurements. In addition, you might offer different fabric choices.
MTM garments still have to be cut and sewn individually since each one is different, but at least your factory or seamstress can get familiar with the styles and their construction. This familiarity does speed up the production a bit.
Similarly with patternmaking, you can work with your patternmaker to develop the base styles ahead of customer orders leaving only smaller adjustments when the customer’s measurements are received. MTM is kind of a hybrid where each order is unique but not one of a kind.
Customized
Another option that is making custom clothing more accessible at lower price points and for more garment types is extensive customizations. This model offers the customer many options for size, style, and/or fabric such that it appears custom to them, but on the production side it isn’t actually.
Mass customization like this is extra work upfront in development, but saves so much time in production. To do this, each potential option has to be patterned and set up in your system ahead of time. It is like ordering a taco bowl at a restaurant like Chipotle. The food is already cooked and ready, but you get to choose what base, toppings, and sauce you want to combine in your bowl.
For example, let’s say you want to offer a pair of pants in 1” inseam length increments. Each of those inseam length options will need to be graded in the pattern like a separate size. Then, when the customer places their order, the garment can be cut and sewn right away.
Because there aren’t infinite options when offering customization in this way, you can sometimes cut multiple garments at once and set up a sewing assembly line. Not always, though. You still might have to pay sample or small-batch prices for production. However, you do save with patternmaking. Once you have the options set up in your pattern files, you don’t need a patternmaker to make adjustments for each order.
Custom garments take extra preparation, time, and coordination to produce. They can be a challenging offering, but there are several different ways you can approach custom production to work for your business and still provide the premium, individual experience to your customers.