Underwear is a replenishment category wearing fashion clothes. A brief is a dozen trims and a size ratio; a bra is a band-and-cup grid, a separate moulding tool for every cup size, and an elastic that still has to pull after the wash regime printed on its own label and a long spell in a carton.
Ask what machines the plant owns before asking for a price. Cut-and-sew tricot, bra making with wire insertion, and circular knitting are three different factories, and a supplier that subcontracts the part you actually care about will not volunteer it. We walk the floor and count the relevant machines against the monthly capacity being quoted.
The chemical and colour failures in intimates sit in wet processing rather than on the sewing floor: restricted azo colourants, extract pH outside the skin-contact range, colourfastness to perspiration on a garment worn against skin all day. Dyeing and finishing are usually subcontracted, so the dye house is approved separately and carries its own test reports.
Lace, elastics, hook-and-eye tape, rings, sliders and bows are dyed on different substrates, so a shade that matches in daylight can split under store lighting. We nominate the elastic and lace suppliers, approve lab dips assessed under D65 and TL84, and require the style to be presented as a full trim card, not as a swatch of body fabric.
A sealed base size proves nothing on its own. We ask for a full size set, apply the grade rules at the smallest and largest sizes, and fit those, because grading drift shows up at the ends of the curve where the complaints come from. Only then is a costing worth discussing, since the curve decides how many sizes the style has to carry.
Intimates are bought again and again, so the useful negotiation is a twelve-month price, not an order price. We fix the making charge and float the material component against a stated cotton and elastane basis, with yarn and long-lead trims booked against a forecast so bulk is not waiting on a four-week elastic delivery.
Work starts from a fit model and a sealed base size, then grade rules per band and per cup, then a size set fitted at the extremes. Size labelling is built at the same time, because the same bra is a UK 34B, a continental 75B, a French 90B and an Italian 2B, and a multi-market pack has to carry all of them without the buyer guessing. Bodywear ranges get a graded torso spec with a stated stretch-and-recovery target rather than flat measurements alone.
We specify yarn type and count, knit gauge, finished weight and elastane content, and set the wash regime the garment is expected to survive, because an elastane percentage on a spec sheet says nothing about power retention. Lab dips and strike-offs are approved with a three-panel shade band, and cross-substrate matching between nylon lace, polyester tape and cotton body is agreed before bulk dyeing. Any anti-odour or anti-bacterial finish is treated as a treated-article question with paperwork attached, not as a selling line.
Moulded styles need a tool per cup size, so the range plan and the tooling budget are decided together and the tooling owner is named in writing. The calendar runs proto, fit sample, size set, pre-production and top of production, with a counter-signed gold seal held on both sides so a later dispute has a physical reference. Long-lead lace and elastic are booked at the pre-production stage, not after the purchase order.
Each size is its own barcode, and a multipack needs a code for the pack as well as a header card that survives hanging. Moulded cups cannot be compression packed, so cartons carry shaped inserts and the cube is fixed by cup volume long before freight is booked. Packing materials are specified BHT-free with anti-yellowing paper, since white nylon and elastane yellow in the carton and the complaint only appears once the goods are in store; labels are then built per destination, with fibre composition in the market's language, the destination's care symbol convention, importer and origin, and for mainland China the safety category and product standard code printed on the label itself.
We write the technical pack, run the fit and size-set stages, and hold a counter-sealed sample for every approved style so bulk is judged against an object rather than an email. Grade rules and the sealed set travel with the style if production moves plant.
We nominate the elastic, lace and hardware suppliers, book the long-lead items against the season's forecast, and hold the yarn and greige position for continuity lines so a repeat order does not restart the yarn lead time from zero.
We book inline inspection while the line is still running and a final random inspection at eighty per cent packed, sampled to ISO 2859-1 against agreed major and minor limits, and hold the balance payment until the report passes. Wired styles run under a written needle-control and metal-detection procedure, since a garment built around steel cannot simply be passed through a detector at the end.
We assemble the fibre-composition declaration, the test reports, the care labelling, the origin proof and the packing list to the destination's rules, and file where filing has to happen before the goods sail. Origin is checked against the preference actually being claimed, not against the sewing country.
For continuity lines we run min and max by size rather than by style, and rebuild the size ratio from real sell-through after the first weeks on shelf. Reorders go against the same sealed set and the same nominated trims, so the second delivery matches the first.
The document set below is what this category needs to clear. We raise it rather than forwarding a checklist.
Bulk moves by sea from South China, Vietnam and the subcontinent into Koper and Rijeka for Serbia and the Balkans and into Leixões for Portugal, with Hong Kong as a free-port hub and Singapore as the transhipment leg for the Asian and Gulf lanes. Flat-packed briefs are dense and cheap to move, so they travel full-container or consolidated LCL, while moulded bras pay for their cube and only justify air freight when a size curve has to be corrected mid-season.
Yes, but split. We fix the making charge, the trims and the packing for the period and float the yarn component against a stated cotton and elastane basis with an agreed review point. Freight is quoted separately, because a single freight rate held for a year is a rate somebody eventually walks away from. The mechanism goes into the supply agreement so neither side renegotiates on every purchase order.
Plan per colour per size, not per style, because that is how the factory plans dyeing and cutting. A brief in four colours across six sizes is twenty-four order lines, each carrying a dye lot minimum, and that arithmetic rather than the headline style minimum is what sets your first buy. Moulded bras add a tool per cup size, so narrowing the cup range does more for an opening order than cutting units.
Yellowing on white nylon and elastane is usually phenolic yellowing caused by BHT in polybags, cartons or packing paper, and it develops in transit and storage rather than at the factory. It is prevented by specifying BHT-free packing materials and testing the packed set as shipped, not the fabric on its own. Loss of elastic power is a separate problem driven by heat and humidity in storage and by the finishing route, which is why we test recovery after a wash cycle instead of accepting an elastane percentage.
It is controlled before the wire goes in, not after. The plant runs a documented needle-control policy with broken-needle logs and one-for-one exchange, components and sub-assemblies are detected at the stage where detection still means something, and wired garments are then handled under a written exception procedure with detectors calibrated for the known hardware. We ask to see the logs during inline inspection, because a policy without a log book is not a policy.
Tell us the product, the origin and the destination. We come back with the classification, the document set and a realistic timeline.
Leave three lines and we will come back with the corridor, the customs position and a realistic timeline for whatever you are moving.