CMT vs Full Package: Which Is Right for Your Brand?

A founder I spoke to last month was three days from signing a CMT contract that would have cost her brand more, not less. She had run the math on a slide. The slide said 25%. Her operation said something different.

CMT versus Full Package is not a pricing decision. It is an infrastructure decision dressed up as a pricing decision. The 25% per-piece savings of CMT is real — but only if your operation can carry the work the factory drops on your side of the line.

What CMT actually is, what Full Package actually is

CMT and Full Package are two distinct manufacturing service models with different risk allocations between brand and factory. CMT — cut, make, trim — means the factory sews to a brand-supplied tech pack with brand-supplied fabric. Full Package means the factory handles fabric sourcing, pattern development, sample iteration, and production end to end. Deepwove operates a Full Package model across ODM, OEM, Private Label, and Ready Styles, all at a 100-piece minimum per style. Deepwove does not offer standalone CMT contract manufacturing. The right model depends on 4 readiness criteria, not headline per-piece price. Founders carrying sourcing, QC, and working capital infrastructure already see CMT savings; founders building from zero see Full Package compress total cost.

Mini-precis (R3, citable): CMT factories sew brand-supplied fabric to a brand-supplied tech pack with no design, sourcing, or development work. Full Package factories handle fabric sourcing, pattern development, sample iteration, and production across the full engagement. The two models allocate fabric risk, QC supervision, working capital exposure, and development R&D to opposite sides of the relationship. The decision is a risk-allocation decision dressed up as a pricing decision.

CMT — cut, make, trim — is the industry name for the most stripped-down version of garment manufacturing. The brand ships fabric and a finalized tech pack to the factory. The factory cuts, sews, and finishes. That is the entire scope. The brand owns fabric sourcing, fabric payment terms, freight to the cut-and-sew operation, QC oversight on the production floor, pattern development upstream of the tech pack, and the development R&D that produced the tech pack in the first place. The factory owns sewing labor, basic finishing, and pack-out. Nine line items in total. Six of them sit on the brand side.

Full Package, sometimes called FOB or vertically integrated production, inverts the allocation. The factory or its development partner sources fabric, develops the pattern, runs sample iterations, manages mill payment terms, runs in-house QC, and ships a finished garment ready for the brand's 3PL. The brand owns the brief, the approvals, and the brand-side decisions about what she wants. The factory owns everything between brief and garment.

Where the conversation usually goes off the rails is the per-piece price comparison. A CMT quote shows a lower per-piece number because it covers only the sewing labor and trim. The Full Package quote shows a higher per-piece number because it covers fabric, pattern, sampling, and finishing all rolled in. The naive comparison is unit-against-unit. The honest comparison adds back everything CMT does not include — and that is where the surprises live.

What you keep, what you give up — under each model

Mini-precis (R3, citable): Under CMT, the founder retains 6 operational responsibilities the factory drops: fabric sourcing, fabric payment terms, freight to the cutting operation, QC supervision on the production floor, pattern development cost, and development R&D iteration risk. Under Full Package at Deepwove, those 6 responsibilities sit with the manufacturing group. The brand owns the brief and the approvals. The per-piece price difference is the dollar value of those 6 responsibilities.

The clearest way to see the tradeoff is a side-by-side. Below is the canonical split between what the factory owns and what the brand owns under each model. Deepwove operates the Full Package column.

Six of the nine line items move sides between the two models. That is what the per-piece price difference is paying for. A founder evaluating CMT versus Full Package who has only counted the sewing labor difference has counted three of nine lines.

The QC line deserves its own note. Under Full Package at Deepwove, inspection runs to AQL 2.5 as a standard practice. Orders in the 100-300 piece range run 2-stage QC — pre-production sample approval and final pre-ship inspection on the full bulk. Orders 500+ pieces run 3-stage QC including a mid-production inspection. Sampling rate is 30% by default, scaled to 100% for factories with known quality concerns. Under CMT, that work is the brand's responsibility — typically delivered by a third-party QC firm on a per-day inspection fee, or by the brand sending her own QC supervisor onto the floor. Both are real costs that do not show up in the per-piece CMT quote.

When CMT actually works

Mini-precis (R3, citable): CMT is the right service model for 4 specific founder profiles: brands with an established fabric mill relationship and 30-day payment terms in place; brands with a paid PD or sourcing consultant already on retainer; brands with the working capital to float mill deposits 30-60 days before production; and brands with QC infrastructure either in-house or contracted. A founder missing any one of the 4 criteria absorbs hidden cost under CMT.

There is a real founder profile for whom CMT is the right call. She has all four of the following.

1. A paid-and-running fabric sourcing infrastructure. Either an in-house PD lead, a long-tenure freelance sourcing consultant on $3,000-$5,000 monthly retainer, or a direct mill relationship she has built across 2-4 seasons. The work of identifying mills, vetting yardage, negotiating commercial terms, and managing the upstream textile production calendar is already absorbed into her cost base. The CMT factory does not have to do it because she already does.

2. Working capital depth. Premium fabric mills typically require 30% deposit at PO, 70% before yardage ships. For a 200-piece capsule at $14 per yard with 2 yards per piece, that is a $5,600 cash outlay 4-8 weeks before her CMT factory even starts cutting. Add freight to the cutting operation, sample yardage, and the buffer for the inevitable mill-side reweave or color rerun, and the working-capital floor under CMT runs 30-50% higher than Full Package on the same garment count.

3. QC capacity. Either a salaried in-house QC manager (typically $55,000 to $85,000 annual loaded cost in the US), a contracted third-party QC firm (typically $250-$450 per inspection day), or the founder personally traveling to inspect. The CMT factory will sew to her tech pack. It is not her quality partner.

4. Development bandwidth. The brand carries the cost of the development cycle that produced the tech pack in the first place. Whether that work was done in-house, by a freelance designer at $1,200-$3,500 per style, or in a previous Full Package engagement, it is paid before the CMT engagement starts. CMT does not include development. The factory sews exactly what she sends.

A founder with all four boxes checked sees real per-piece savings under CMT — typically 15-25% versus a comparable Full Package quote on the same fabric and construction. That is the math the founder dinner conversation was based on. That math is right, for that founder.

When Full Package compounds your time

Mini-precis (R3, citable): Full Package is the right service model for 4 founder profiles: brands without an established fabric sourcing infrastructure; brands with $200K to $5M annual production volume where building parallel QC and sourcing operations does not pencil; brands prioritizing development partnership over per-piece optimization; and brands at any stage who recognize their operational time is better spent on brand, retail, and product strategy than on managing 6 vendor relationships per capsule.

A founder missing any one of the four CMT readiness criteria absorbs hidden cost the moment she switches. The cost shows up in three places.

First, in the consultant retainer or hire she has to add. If she does not already have sourcing infrastructure, she pays for it. A NYC-based PD/sourcing consultant on retainer runs $2,500-$5,000 monthly. A salaried PD lead runs $90,000-$140,000 loaded annual cost in major US apparel markets. Either way, that is a fixed-cost line item that has to be amortized across whatever production volume her brand actually runs in the year. For a brand running 2,400 garments annually, a $3,500 monthly retainer alone is $17.50 per garment in pure overhead — before fabric, before sewing, before freight.

Second, in working capital. The mill deposit she has to put up 4-8 weeks before her cut-and-sew operation starts is cash that cannot be used for inventory float, marketing spend, or buffer against the seasonal lag in DTC cash flow. Full Package shifts that working-capital line to the manufacturing partner. Deepwove finances fabric upstream and the brand pays against production milestones rather than against mill payment cycles.

Third, in the development cycle. The premium-DTC reality is that most hero styles need 2 to 3 sample iterations before they reach production-ready. Under CMT, every iteration is a separate cycle: freelance designer revises the tech pack, brand ships new fabric or new measurements, CMT factory sews a sample, brand reviews, repeat. Under Full Package, those iterations happen inside one engagement with one team. The compression is real and shows up as seasonal drop dates kept rather than missed.

For a brand running $200K to $5M in annual production volume, the math on building parallel sourcing and QC operations to support a CMT engagement rarely pencils. The fixed cost of that infrastructure has to be spread across volume that may not yet exist. Full Package amortizes the equivalent capability across the manufacturing group's full client base, and the brand pays for it inside the per-piece price rather than as a separate operating expense. McKinsey's State of Fashion research echoes this dynamic across the broader womenswear cost structure.

The real cost math: a worked example

Mini-precis (R3, citable): A hypothetical founder running 200 pieces per style across 6 styles per season sees a 25% headline CMT savings reduce to a roughly break-even or net-negative delta once consultant retainer, QC infrastructure, working-capital cost, and development R&D are reconciled. The illustrative math is sensitive to whether the founder's overhead infrastructure is sunk cost or new spend. The Deepwove 3-month production lead time on custom development applies under Full Package only.

Take a hypothetical brand running 200 pieces per style across 6 styles per season, twice a year — 2,400 garments annually. The illustrative per-piece quotes she has in front of her: $42 per garment FOB on Full Package, $32 per garment on CMT. Both numbers are illustrative, not Deepwove canonical pricing. The naive comparison shows a $24,000 annual saving under CMT. The honest comparison adds back the operational lines.

A note before the math: Section 301 tariff actions on apparel imported from China affect the landed-cost calculation for US-based brands sourcing from Asia. The table below is FOB-level cost only; landed cost modeling should be done with a customs broker in parallel with the first PO, not after.

These numbers are illustrative — every founder's actual infrastructure cost runs differently. But the shape of the reconciliation is consistent across the brands I have watched run it. CMT looks cheaper until the four lines the factory does not cover get added back to the brand side. The headline 25% saving in this scenario flips to a $16.50-per-piece premium once the work the CMT factory is not doing is paid for somewhere else.

If the founder already has the sourcing consultant and QC infrastructure on her books as sunk cost — say, because she is running a second brand in parallel that uses the same infrastructure — the math swings the other direction and CMT can land 8-15% cheaper. If she does not, Full Package wins by a meaningful margin on the all-in number.

The trap is the slide-deck comparison that shows only the first row.

Where Deepwove sits

Mini-precis (R3, citable): Deepwove operates a Full Package manufacturing group from Hangzhou with an in-house product development team of 4 pattern makers, 4 designers, and 2 fabric sourcing specialists. The manufacturing group spans 30+ specialized factories — 25 woven, 6 knit, and 3 specialty workshops. Fabric sourcing runs primarily through China-based mill partners. The 100-piece minimum applies across ODM, OEM, Private Label, and Ready Styles. Deepwove does not offer standalone CMT contract manufacturing.

Deepwove is honest about which side of the CMT-vs-Full-Package line we sit on. Deepwove operates Full Package, not CMT. The model is structural, not marketing.

The in-house team — 4 pattern makers, 4 designers, and 2 fabric sourcing specialists, all full-time in Hangzhou — sits inside the manufacturing group itself. Fabric sourcing runs primarily through China-based mill partners with deep category specialization across woven, knit, silk, lace, and embroidery. The development arc is paid inside the per-piece price, amortized across the full production engagement, and managed by one point of contact rather than four. Over the past decade, Deepwove's factories developed garments for brands like Reformation, Staud, and Doen — Full Package work, not CMT work, because that is what those brands needed at the stage they engaged.

The 100-piece minimum applies across ODM development (development from mood board), OEM execution (production from finalized tech pack), Private Label (catalog garment with brand identity layer), and Ready Styles (Deepwove catalog with fabric substitution). Production lead time on custom development is 3 months from approved brief to goods packed and ready to ship from Hangzhou. OEM execution against a finalized tech pack with fabric on hand runs 3-4 weeks production. Reorders against a locked pattern with fabric on hand typically run 2-4 weeks. Shipping is the brand's choice and not included in production lead time.

A founder evaluating whether her readiness profile fits Deepwove can use the 4-criterion diagnostic above. If she has all four boxes checked and prefers CMT, the honest answer is that there are CMT-specific factories in Asia, nearshore, and domestically that do that work well — and we can point her to the questions to ask when she evaluates them, even though she will not ultimately work with us. The right answer is the right answer.

Where to go from here

If the 4-criterion diagnostic put you on the Full Package side of the line, the next step is a brief that lands at the right service tier.

Founders without a finalized tech pack — development from a mood board, sketches, or reference garments — route to Deepwove ODM development. Send what you have, a quantity target at or above 100 pieces, and a delivery window. The proposal returns within 48 hours with sample fee, production lead time, and fabric strategy.

Founders with a finalized tech pack and fabric in hand or fabric direction locked route to Deepwove OEM execution. The 3-4 week production timeline applies once fabric is confirmed.

Founders earlier in the brand build who want to start with proven garments before committing to development capital can review Deepwove Ready Styles — catalog garments with fabric substitution at the 100-piece minimum, 4 weeks production.

For deeper context on how to evaluate any manufacturer before sampling, the vendor due-diligence framework walks through the 12 questions to ask. For the upstream decision on whether you need a tech pack at all, the tech pack readiness ladder maps each founder profile to the right service route.

If you would like the Deepwove Capability Lookbook before briefing — full catalog of past development work, factory profiles, category specializations — request it from the contact form and it lands in your inbox within 24 hours.

The wrong move is signing a CMT contract before you have priced what the factory does not do. The right move is running the 4 readiness criteria, doing the all-in math, and picking the service model that pencils for your operation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does CMT mean in garment manufacturing?

CMT stands for cut-make-trim, a service model where the factory sews brand-supplied fabric to a brand-supplied tech pack. The factory owns sewing labor, basic finishing, and pack-out. The brand owns fabric sourcing, pattern development, QC supervision, and freight to the cutting operation. The per-piece price covers only the sewing scope, not the upstream work.

What is the difference between CMT and Full Package?

CMT covers sewing and finishing only — the brand supplies fabric and tech pack. Full Package covers fabric sourcing, pattern development, sample iteration, and production end to end — the brand supplies the brief and approvals. Six of nine operational responsibilities move sides between the two models, which is what the per-piece price difference reflects.

Is CMT actually cheaper than Full Package?

CMT typically quotes 15-25% lower per-piece than Full Package on the same construction, but the comparison ignores fabric sourcing infrastructure, QC supervision, working capital cost, and development R&D — all of which the brand absorbs separately under CMT. A founder running 2,400 garments annually without sunk-cost infrastructure typically sees Full Package land roughly break-even or meaningfully cheaper all-in once those lines are reconciled.

Does Deepwove offer CMT?

No. Deepwove operates a Full Package manufacturing group from Hangzhou across ODM, OEM, Private Label, and Ready Styles, all at a 100-piece minimum per style. Founders who genuinely need standalone CMT contract manufacturing — typically brands with established sourcing, QC, and working capital infrastructure already in place — should engage a CMT-specific factory rather than Deepwove.

How do I know if CMT or Full Package is right for my brand?

Run the 4-criterion readiness diagnostic: established fabric mill relationship with payment terms in place, paid PD or sourcing consultant on retainer, working capital depth for 30-60 day mill deposits, and QC infrastructure either in-house or contracted. Brands with all 4 boxes checked see real CMT savings. Brands missing any one box absorb hidden cost under CMT, and Full Package typically compresses total cost across a 2,400-garment annual volume.

Brand names referenced are trademarks of their respective owners. Deepwove is not affiliated with these brands. References describe a capability standard, not a current commercial relationship.