Because without it, you will waste time, energy, and maybe most important: money. That's the short answer, but the value is clear. At some point, a tech pack will be made because it's a critical step in the creation of physical products. It might as well be one of your first steps for all the reasons below, too. Go ahead, read on, and I think you'll be convinced! 1. It shortens your timeline. A well made tech pack can reduce your speed to market in a significant way. It's all about getting your product put together exactly as you imagine it. By building a strong tech pack, you make it more likely to get closer on the first go. Most likely, you will have to sample more than once, but by creating something extremely close to your end goal, you're more likely to reach where you're going. 2. It's a cost-effective approach. Many factories charge for samples, and the more rounds of samples, the higher the cost to you, which is why nailing it early on is essential. This is the best way you can get bulk goods that represent exactly what you're going for.
3. Not only is it cost-effective, but it's necessary for costing! A lot of factories will not be able to help you without a tech pack of some kind. By building this handy little instruction guide, you're also giving the factory all the critical details to allow them to provide you with a cost quote! Determining the cost of goods is an essential step to research manufacturing, and you'll want to understand where a factory costs your garment before deciding to sample with them. If your target cost is $8.00 and they are going to charge you $28.00, then you already know you are too far off target to keep moving along with them. 4. It allows you to collaborate with overseas teams more easily and quickly. A thorough tech pack can also replace the need for your own pattern maker, which may be hard to find locally. Patternmaking is a dying art in the United States, but it's growing quite rapidly in Asian countries. Large, robust overseas factories almost always have their own team of pattern makers. Pattern makers used to be much more prominent in the industry, and many of them still make their patterns by hand. With new software systems and taking things digitally, it's much easier to draft patterns on a computer than ever before. 5. It helps establish your fit and grading. With a tech pack, you are also explaining measurement points and how your product should fit. Fit is one of the trickiest parts of creating an apparel product because so many bodies are built differently. You want to develop products that meet a general universal standard to some degree. Fitting on someone with too unique of a shape will likely result in high returns. 6. It protects both parties while setting clear expectations. By the end of the process and before production starts, your manufacturer should have everything they need to reproduce this product in another factory by simply sending a tech pack. It also creates a responsibility to uphold the details and construction elements. 7. Supply chain shifts and moving factories. After you have this master document, it is much easier to replicate and replenish, even if you move factories. This is important more than ever because it's hard to predict crazy world events like what is going on with COVID-19 at the moment. Having a tech pack allows you to be more agile and move products if you need to change to a different manufacturing plan. 8. It helps you track changes. Specs change, and sometimes you want to refer back to an old spec. Tech packs let you refer back to all the changes you've made so you can go back to an old version or revisit an idea quickly. You'd be surprised at how often you refer to previous versions!
Tech packs might not be something you're up for completing on your own, and that's cool. You don't have to do it alone, check out our services to see how we can help you create them.
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