Premium womenswear founders typically evaluate three to five manufacturers before sampling a first capsule. Most pick on the wrong signals. Deepwove answers these questions for prospective brand partners every week from Hangzhou. The questions a founder asks before sampling reveal more about a vendor than the sample itself. This guide walks twelve due-diligence questions that separate development partners from production-only vendors. Each question maps to a real failure mode. Each answer should feel boring when delivered honestly. Boring is the signal.

1. What Is a Realistic MOQ for Premium Womenswear?

Deepwove's minimum order quantity is 100 pieces per style across ODM, OEM, Private Label, and Ready Styles. Actual production runs average 300 pieces per style across the past quarter. Manufacturers quoting 30, 50, or 75 pieces per style on a first PO either run a different business model or reset the floor on the second order. The 100-piece floor is the floor, not a marketing position.

The MOQ question is the cleanest filter in the entire due-diligence stack, and the most commonly miscommunicated.

A real production line — fabric width, marker efficiency, dye lot economics, machine setup time — does not run efficiently below a hundred pieces of a single style. That is the structural reason. Below 100, a factory is either subsidizing setup costs from elsewhere, running on fabric remnants, or quoting a number it cannot honor at second-order scale.

What founders should know: a 100-piece floor is not a barrier to entry. It is a vote of confidence. A manufacturer that says 100 is telling a founder she is treated as a real brand, not a sampling experiment. The math also works: at 100 pieces per style and three styles per capsule, a brand commits to 300 units total — well within first-season scale for a premium DTC brand.

The follow-up question matters more than the number itself: what happens to MOQ on the second PO? A vendor whose floor mysteriously drops on a second order, or rises after the relationship is signed, is testing where the brand will accept friction. Deepwove's number is 100 pieces per style across every service tier, every season, every style. The same question, the same answer, every time.

2. How Long Does Sampling Actually Take? (Hint: It's Not One Week for Most Briefs)

Deepwove's pattern team produces samples within one week 90% of the time when fabric is on hand. When fabric sourcing is required, add +1 week (2 weeks total) for most briefs. The "1-week sampling" line in vendor pitches is technically possible and commonly mis-sold. Most styles reach approved sample in two to three iterations. First-round approvals occur when the brief is tight and the tech pack is clean.

The "one-week sample" promise is the second most-abused phrase in apparel manufacturing. It is true, conditionally. The conditions get omitted on sales calls.

Walk through what one week of sampling actually requires:

The brief lands. The pattern maker translates it into a paper or digital pattern — half a day on a clean tech pack, two days on a mood-board-only brief that needs interpretation. A fabric sample is pulled from existing stock. A first physical sample is cut, sewn, fitted, photographed, and shipped. Five to seven calendar days, end to end.

Now imagine the brief calls for a fine-gauge merino the factory does not stock, or a specific yarn count and twist that has to be sourced through partner mills, or a hand-loomed jacquard. Fabric sourcing adds one to three weeks. The "1-week sample" promise has not been broken — it just was never the right promise.

A founder evaluating sampling speed should ask three sub-questions. Is fabric on hand for my brief? If yes, one week is real. If no, the honest number is +1 week for sourcing (2 weeks total). How many iterations to approval, on average? Two to three is realistic. Single-round approvals occur when the founder hands over a clean tech pack with measurements and construction notes, not a Pinterest board. Founders unsure whether their current artifacts qualify as a tech pack can self-diagnose against the 5-tier readiness ladder before briefing. Who pays for sample fabric and labor? Sample development at Deepwove invoices at $200 per style, with iterations included up to approval.

A vendor promising one-week samples on every brief, regardless of fabric source, is either lying or running a CMT (cut-make-trim) operation that depends on the brand supplying everything. Both are workable, but they are not the same business.

3. How Do You Verify a Manufacturer Before Committing?

A founder should verify three things before signing a sampling agreement: business registration, factory floor reality, and reference customers. The verification stack takes less than four hours of work and prevents the most common founder failures. Deepwove encourages walk-through video calls during evaluation. Manufacturers refusing live floor visibility deserve immediate disqualification.

Three artifacts settle most due diligence:

Business registration. A real manufacturer is registered. In China, the unified social credit code (统一社会信用代码) appears on every legitimate business license. The license states scope of business — apparel manufacturing should be explicit, not "trading" or "import-export." Founders evaluating Italian, Portuguese, or Vietnamese manufacturers should ask the equivalent in those jurisdictions.

Factory floor reality. Ask for a live walk-through video call. Not pre-recorded footage, not a polished marketing reel — a phone camera, in real time, showing cutting tables, sewing lines, sample rooms, and fabric storage. A real factory has nothing to hide. A trading company posing as a factory will deflect, citing "client confidentiality" or scheduling difficulties. Deepwove offers floor walk-throughs during the evaluation phase as standard.

Reference customers. Two to three is the right number. Names of brands, length of relationship, and whether the manufacturer has handled at least one full season cycle. A vendor unable to produce references is a vendor a founder should not be the test case for.

The verification stack also reveals capability shape. A factory with 25 woven specialists and 6 knit factories has a different competence profile than a single-line operation. A pattern room with four full-time pattern makers signals development depth that a CMT factory simply does not invest in.

4. Should You Use a Sourcing Agent, a Manufacturer, or Both?

Sourcing agents add communication ease and add cost without adding manufacturing capability. Manufacturers operate the production line. The right answer for a premium founder is usually direct manufacturer access, structured around an in-house product development team that does the agent's job better. Deepwove's structure removes the agent entirely: in-house development sits inside the manufacturing group itself.

The agent versus manufacturer question is loaded because the industry is structured around the confusion.

A sourcing agent is a brokering layer. She finds factories, manages communication, and adds 8-15% to landed cost. Her value proposition is reducing friction for a founder who would otherwise be coordinating across language, time zones, and technical specifications. For some brands — single-line product, low complexity, no recurring development — the agent model works.

For a premium womenswear brand with multi-season development, the agent model usually fails. The reason is structural: an agent does not develop. She brokers. When a fabric question, a fit revision, or a construction tradeoff comes up, the agent passes it from founder to factory and back. Each pass adds time and lossy translation.

A third option is a manufacturer with an in-house product development team — the development capability and the production line under one roof. Deepwove operates this way: an in-house team of four pattern makers, four designers, and two fabric sourcing specialists, all full-time in Hangzhou, sitting inside the manufacturing group of 30+ specialized factories. One point of contact. No translation layer. No commission stack on top of factory cost.

This is the structural argument the founder is buying when she chooses an integrated manufacturer over a sourcing agent: not lower cost (though that is a side effect), but the elimination of the development gap that agents cannot close.

5. Can the Manufacturer Actually Develop, or Just Produce?

Development capability and production capability are different competencies. A factory that can sew a tech pack is not necessarily one that can build a tech pack. The cleanest test: ask the manufacturer to walk through a recent style she developed from a mood board, naming the pattern maker, the fabric mill, the iteration count, and the construction tradeoffs. A real development house answers in specifics. A production-only operation deflects.

The development versus production distinction is the single most important question in this guide.

Most manufacturing failures founders complain about online — wrong fit, wrong fabric, wrong drape, wrong everything — are development failures dressed as production failures. The factory sewed exactly what was specified. The specification was wrong. The vendor that should have caught it does not employ pattern makers or designers; she employs sewing operators and a sales lead.

A development house has a different shape:

Founders evaluating development capability should ask for a worked example. Walk me through the last style you developed from a mood board. The answer should name the pattern maker, the fabric chosen and why, the iteration count, the construction tradeoffs encountered. A real development house gives specifics. A trading company gives generalities.

6. What Quality Control Standards Should You Demand?

Quality control scales with order size. Typical orders in the 100-300 piece range run a 2-stage QC: pre-production sample approval, then final pre-ship inspection on the full bulk. Orders 500+ piece run a 3-stage QC: pre-production meeting, mid-production inspection, and final pre-ship inspection. A founder should ask for the manufacturer's defect rate, the AQL standard applied, and the corrective action protocol when a batch fails. Deepwove inspects to AQL 2.5 by default, with a documented pre-ship QC report; tighter standards are available on request. Industry-standard frameworks like ISO 9001 provide the underlying audit structure.

Quality control is the most under-asked question in founder due diligence and the highest-impact one.

Three layers matter:

In-line inspection. During production, QC operators check stitching, fit, and finish on a sample basis. The defect rate at this stage is the leading indicator of how the final batch will look.

End-of-line inspection at AQL 2.5. Acceptable Quality Limit is the ANSI/ASQC Z1.4 statistical sampling standard apparel buyers operate against. AQL 2.5 means 2.5% defect rate is acceptable on a sample-tested batch. Premium womenswear sometimes holds tighter — Deepwove inspects to AQL 1.5 or 0.4 on buyer request, typical for higher-grade specifications.

Pre-shipment inspection. Either the manufacturer's QC team or a third-party inspector (SGS, Bureau Veritas, Intertek) runs a final batch inspection before goods leave the factory. The inspection report is documented, dated, and shared with the brand.

Founders should ask three questions:

A vendor that cannot answer these questions does not have a quality control system. She has a hope.

7. How Long Will the Lead Time Really Be — Including Fabric?

Premium womenswear development from approved brief to goods packed and ready to ship at Deepwove runs 3 months production lead time on custom development: Phase 1 sampling, fabric sourcing, and approvals across weeks 1-6, then Phase 2 first-order production at 6-8 weeks (typically planned at 8 weeks for buffer). Shipping to a destination warehouse is a separate variable the founder controls: air freight runs 7-10 days, sea freight to the US West Coast, US East Coast, Australian ports, or European destinations lands at 4 weeks. Reorders against locked patterns and pre-positioned fabric compress to 2-4 weeks of production. Founders running drop cadences should expect the first PO to take the full production lead time, plus their chosen freight leg.

The lead-time question is where almost every first-time founder underestimates the calendar.

The 3-month production lead time is the physical breakdown of a premium development cycle:

This is the structural calendar. Production lead time does not compress on willpower or budget; the freight leg compresses by spending more on air over sea.

What can compress on the production side: a Ready Styles selection — already-developed catalogue patterns with fabric in stock — runs 4 weeks of production, no Phase 1. This is the season-end fill model, not the custom development model. Reorders compress further: 2-4 weeks of production once the first PO has cleared and fabric is positioned. End-to-end depending on the founder's freight choice: an air-shipped reorder can land in a US warehouse within roughly 3-4 weeks total; a sea-shipped reorder to the US West Coast within roughly 6-8 weeks total.

A separate case: an OEM client supplying her own finalized fabric and approved tech pack carries a 3-4 week production window — no Phase 1, no fabric sourcing risk on the manufacturer side. The freight leg is the same separate variable as in any other cycle.

The founder failure mode here is benchmarking the first PO against the steady-state PO. They are different animals. A brand that needs goods on the shelf in 8 weeks from a cold start is not failing because of manufacturing — she is failing because the calendar was wrong from week zero.

8. How Do You Compare Manufacturers Across Countries?

Premium womenswear development has historically clustered in Italy, Portugal, and parts of Asia — China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Sri Lanka. Each region carries a different MOQ floor, lead time profile, mill access, and cluster depth. The comparison founders should run is capability shape against brief, not unit cost in isolation. According to McKinsey's State of Fashion, apparel sourcing diversification has accelerated since 2020, but premium development has remained heavily clustered.

Country comparison usually starts and ends on price. Premium founders running this comparison correctly should weight capability shape, mill access, and regulatory overhead before unit cost.

Portugal and Italy. The premium European cluster, anchored around Porto, Veneto, and Tuscany. Italian and Japanese mill access is native — fabric ecosystems sit physically adjacent to the cut-and-sew floor, not brokered across continents. MOQs at the premium development tier typically start at 200-500 pieces in Portugal and 300-800 pieces in Italy, with corresponding cost premium. Lead times run 4-7 months end-to-end including freight on the Portuguese and Italian side. Cultural fit matters here — European founders often work with European factories not on cost grounds but on calendar synchronization, shared fashion-week timing, and the marketing-story value of "Made in Italy" or "Made in Portugal."

Vietnam and Bangladesh. Significant share absorbed from China since 2020, primarily in commodity tiers — knit basics, woven basics, mass-market activewear. Section 301 tariff treatment is favorable on most apparel HTS codes versus China-origin imports. MOQs typically run 500-1,000+ pieces per style at the production tier. Premium-development capability variance is wide — the strongest Vietnam factories can match Chinese cluster output on specific construction categories; the weaker end struggles on premium dress development at small batch. Lead times on production-segment work run 4-5 months end-to-end including freight. Mill access remains limited compared to Chinese and European clusters.

Cambodia and Sri Lanka. Smaller premium-tier presence, with Sri Lanka anchoring some lingerie and intimates capability and Cambodia carrying knit and basics share. MOQs and lead times broadly track the Vietnam/Bangladesh band; mill access is more constrained.

Within China, the apparel cluster spans regional specializations. Hangzhou and the Yangtze River Delta anchor silk, knit, and dress development depth. Guangzhou and the Pearl River Delta anchor knitwear, denim, and outerwear. Shanghai sits between, with strong woven and finishing capability. The Chinese cluster is not monolithic — the comparison "China vs. Vietnam" obscures more than it reveals, because a Hangzhou silk dress factory and a Guangzhou knitwear factory have very little in common operationally.

We are based in Hangzhou, so the rest of this guide reflects that perspective. If you have decided China makes sense for your brand — fabric ecosystem depth, established cluster, premium development capability concentration — here is what working with us specifically looks like: 100-piece minimum order quantity per style, 3-month production lead time on custom development from approved brief to goods packed and ready to ship from Hangzhou (shipping to your warehouse runs separately by the freight leg you choose), in-house product development team operating inside the manufacturing group rather than between brand and factory. We are one cluster's option inside the broader Asia decision, not a recommendation against any other geography.

9. What Should the Tech Pack vs. Mood Board Conversation Look Like?

A clean tech pack compresses sampling timelines and reduces iteration count. A mood-board-only brief works for development houses with in-house design and pattern teams; it does not work for production-only factories. Deepwove accepts both inputs. Tech-pack briefs reach approved sample in 1-2 iterations. Mood-board briefs typically reach approval in 2-3 iterations and require an extra week for translation into specification.

A founder's brief sets the entire development cycle.

The two ends of the spectrum:

Tech pack brief. A complete technical document: flat sketches with measurements, fabric specifications, construction notes, trim details, label placement, finishing requirements. Hands the manufacturer a specification she can build to. Approved samples typically come back in 1-2 iterations. Founder retains full design control.

Mood-board brief. A visual reference deck — silhouettes, fabric directions, construction inspirations, fit muses. Hands the manufacturer the intent and asks her to translate into specification. Only works with a manufacturer that has in-house design and pattern capability. Approved samples come back in 2-3 iterations as design intent gets clarified through fitting cycles.

Most founders fall in the middle: partial tech pack, partial mood board. This works fine when the manufacturer has in-house translation capability. It fails when the factory is production-only and expects fully-specified inputs. The tech-pack readiness guide walks through the five tiers between mood board and finalized spec — and which Deepwove service path each tier should brief.

The honest framing: a founder picking a manufacturer should pick the input model first, then the manufacturer who matches it. A founder with a strong design background and production patternmaking experience can run tech-pack-only with a CMT factory. A founder leading a creative-direction-driven brand without in-house production resources should pick a development house — the input cost in time and money is much lower.

Deepwove accepts either input. Tech packs go straight to pattern translation. Mood boards go through the in-house design team for one week of interpretation, then to pattern. The cost difference is roughly the value of the design iteration.

10. What Should a First Production Run Cost?

Premium womenswear FOB pricing varies by category and construction. Founders should ask manufacturers for a category-and-construction-specific quote, not a flat rate. A trustworthy manufacturer quotes against the actual brief, with line items for fabric, labor, trim, and overhead. A vendor who quotes a flat per-piece number sight-unseen is selling a commodity, not development.

This is the question most blog posts pretend has a clean answer. It does not.

What a founder should expect:

Quote against the brief, not against a category. A "premium dress" can be a $25 FOB sundress or a $90 FOB silk-charmeuse evening style. The manufacturer cannot quote without seeing the construction. A founder who accepts a category-only flat quote is signing up for a price renegotiation later.

Line-item transparency. Fabric cost, labor cost, trim cost, factory overhead, freight terms (FOB, EXW, DDP). A real quote breaks these out. A trading-company quote bundles everything into a single number that hides where the margin sits.

MOQ-tied pricing. Per-piece cost moves with run size. A 100-piece run costs more per piece than a 1000-piece run. The factory that quotes the same per-piece number across order sizes is hiding setup costs in the unit price.

Sample fee transparency. Sample development at Deepwove is invoiced at $200 per style for the standard development cycle, with iterations included up to approval. Vendors who roll sample costs into bulk pricing make development cost invisible until the brand walks away.

The structural advice is to skip vendors who quote flat numbers without seeing the brief. The founder time saved by a quick number is paid back many times over in midstream renegotiation.

11. What Quality Control and Ethical Standards Should the Manufacturer Hold?

Premium womenswear founders should expect manufacturers to hold third-party social compliance audits — Sedex SMETA, BSCI, or WRAP — at minimum, with the option of higher-bar standards like SA8000 or Fair Trade Certified. Quality certifications like ISO 9001 indicate process maturity. A manufacturer that cannot produce a current audit certificate is not a manufacturer a premium brand should be photographed with.

Two distinct certification layers matter for premium womenswear founders.

Social compliance audits. These cover labor conditions, working hours, wage compliance, health and safety. The major frameworks:

A founder should ask which audit the manufacturer holds, see the current certificate (with expiration date), and understand the audit findings. A "no findings" audit is rare; what matters is that findings exist, are documented, and have corrective actions. A manufacturer claiming a perfect audit history is either lying or hiding undocumented issues.

Quality management certifications. ISO 9001 is the global quality management standard. It does not certify the quality of garments but the process maturity of the manufacturer. A factory holding ISO 9001 has documented procedures for production planning, inspection, corrective action, and continuous improvement.

Fabric and chemical compliance. OEKO-TEX Standard 100 certifies fabric for human-skin safety. ZDHC (Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals) covers wet-processing chemistry. These are mill-level certifications most relevant for brands marketing on textile safety.

The honest framing: certifications do not guarantee quality. They are necessary, not sufficient. Combined with a floor walk, reference customers, and a real sample, they constitute the verification stack.

12. What Red Flags Should Make You Walk Away?

Five signals predict manufacturer relationships that fail within the first year: refusal of live floor video, inability to produce reference customers, MOQ that drops on the first PO, pattern makers who cannot be named, and vague quality control responses. Each red flag in isolation can be explained. Two or more in combination is a clear walk-away. A founder's time is worth more than the cost of restarting due diligence with the next vendor.

Five red flags, each with the structural reason:

1. Refusal of live floor video. Real factories show their floors. Trading companies do not have floors to show. A vendor who repeatedly reschedules, cites client confidentiality, or sends pre-recorded footage instead of a live walk-through is hiding the operational reality.

2. Inability to produce reference customers. A manufacturer with no references is either brand-new (acceptable, but the founder is the test case) or has burned past relationships (not acceptable). Two to three references with verifiable contact paths should be the minimum bar.

3. MOQ that drops on the first PO. A vendor who agrees to 30 or 50 pieces "just for the first order" is testing where the brand will accept friction. The MOQ either stays at that level forever (a margin-killer for the manufacturer, leading to corner-cutting) or returns to the real number on the second PO (now the brand is stuck in a relationship with mismatched economics).

4. Pattern makers who cannot be named. A development house has named pattern makers with backgrounds. A trading company has "our team." Asking for the pattern maker's name and years of experience is a fast diagnostic.

5. Vague quality control answers. "We do quality control" is not an answer. The answer should include AQL standard, in-line inspection protocol, pre-shipment inspection, and corrective action procedure. A vendor without specifics has not built a QC system.

Bonus red flag: pricing that is too aggressive. A premium woven dress quoted at a fast-fashion FOB number is not a deal — it is a different garment. The factory has either reduced the construction quality, switched the fabric, or front-loaded a price increase for the next PO.

The walk-away rule: one red flag deserves a follow-up question. Two or more red flags is a clear signal to disengage and continue due diligence with the next vendor. The cost of restarting due diligence is days. The cost of a failed first capsule is months and the brand's launch window.

A Note on Where Deepwove Fits

Deepwove operates an in-house product development team — designers, pattern makers, fabric sourcing specialists — inside a manufacturing group of 30+ specialized factories in Hangzhou, China. The business answers exactly the questions covered above, in exactly this order, on every founder evaluation call.

Deepwove's factories developed womenswear for brands including Cult Gaia, Self-Portrait, and Aritzia across the past decade. The minimum order quantity is 100 pieces per style. Production lead time runs 3 months on custom development from approved brief to goods packed and ready to ship from Hangzhou; 4 weeks of production on Ready Styles selections; 2-4 weeks of production on reorders against locked patterns and fabric on hand. Shipping to a destination warehouse is a separate leg the founder controls — air freight runs 7-10 days to US or European gateways and 5-7 days to Sydney; sea freight to the US West Coast, US East Coast, Australian ports, or European destinations lands at 4 weeks. Sample development invoices at $200 per style with iterations included up to approval. The on-time delivery rate sits at 90% across the past 12 months. Every first-order client to date has placed at least one reorder.

The structural difference is the in-house development team — four pattern makers, four designers, two fabric sourcing specialists, all full-time in Hangzhou — operating inside the manufacturing group rather than between the brand and the factory.

The questions a founder asks before sampling reveal more than the sample. Asking the right ones is half the work. Answering them honestly is the other half.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a realistic MOQ for premium womenswear from China?

For premium womenswear development, the realistic minimum order quantity in established Chinese manufacturing clusters like Hangzhou and Guangzhou is 100 pieces per style. Below 100 pieces, fabric width and dye-lot economics break down, and the factory is either subsidizing setup costs or quoting a number it cannot honor at second-order scale. Deepwove's floor is 100 pieces per style across every service tier and every season.

How long does sampling actually take in apparel manufacturing?

Sampling timeline depends on fabric availability. With fabric on hand, samples ship within one week 90% of the time at Deepwove. When fabric sourcing is required, add +1 week (2 weeks total) for most premium briefs. Most styles reach approved sample in two to three development iterations, with first-round approvals occurring on tight tech-pack briefs.

How do you tell a development house from a production-only factory?

Ask the manufacturer to walk through a recent style developed from a mood board. A real development house names the pattern maker, the fabric mill, the iteration count, and the construction tradeoffs encountered. A production-only factory deflects with generalities. Pattern makers on payroll, fabric sourcing specialists with mill relationships, and an iteration philosophy that quotes 2-3 rounds (not "one and done") are the structural markers of development capability.

Should you use a sourcing agent or work directly with a manufacturer?

For a premium womenswear brand with multi-season development, the right answer is usually direct manufacturer access — specifically, a manufacturer with an in-house product development team. Sourcing agents add 8-15% landed cost without adding manufacturing capability. The agent's job is communication ease; an integrated manufacturer with in-house designers, pattern makers, and fabric sourcing specialists does that job better, faster, and without the commission stack.

What quality control standard should you demand from a manufacturer?

Premium womenswear founders should expect AQL 2.5 as the standard inspection level on bulk production. Typical 100-300 piece orders run a 2-stage QC: pre-production sample approval, then final pre-ship inspection on the full bulk. Larger orders of 500+ pieces run a 3-stage QC: pre-production meeting, mid-production inspection, and final pre-ship inspection. Sampling rate is 30% by default, scaled to 100% for factories with quality concerns. AQL 1.5 or 0.4 inspection is available on buyer request, typically tied to higher-grade specifications. Ask for the inspection report in writing before goods leave the factory.

What red flags signal a manufacturer to walk away from?

Five red flags predict failed first-year manufacturer relationships: refusal of live floor video calls, inability to produce reference customers, MOQ that drops below stated floor on the first PO, pattern makers who cannot be named with experience credentials, and vague quality control answers without specifics on AQL standard and inspection protocol. One red flag deserves a follow-up question; two or more is a clear walk-away.

How long is the production lead time from approved brief to shipment?

For custom premium womenswear development at Deepwove, the production lead time is 3 months from approved brief to goods packed and ready to ship from Hangzhou: Phase 1 sampling, fabric sourcing, and approvals across weeks 1-6, then Phase 2 first-order production at 6-8 weeks (typically planned at 8 weeks for buffer). Shipping to a destination warehouse is a separate leg the founder controls: air freight to US gateways or European cities runs 7-10 days, air to Sydney 5-7 days; sea freight to US West Coast or Australian ports lands at 3-4 weeks; sea freight to US East Coast or European destinations 4 weeks. Reorders against locked patterns and pre-positioned fabric run 2-4 weeks of production, plus the chosen freight leg. Ready Styles selections — already-developed catalogue patterns with fabric in stock — run 4 weeks of production, plus freight. An OEM brief with client-supplied fabric and finalized tech pack carries a 3-4 week production window plus freight.

Where to Go from Here

If the twelve questions in this guide map to a brief in flight, your next step depends on where you are.

If you would like to see how Deepwove answers each of these twelve questions for your specific brief, the Capability Lookbook is the natural next step. It walks construction detail, garment breakdowns, MOQ economics, sample turnaround, in-house pattern team workflow, and reorder rate evidence on the 30+ specialized factories we work through, across 25 pages, sent to a founder's inbox within 24 hours.

The questions in this guide are the same questions Deepwove answers every week from Hangzhou. Asking them well is the founder's half of the work.

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.