Your Design, Made Real —
Without the Months Spent Hunting Fabric or Rewriting Patterns.

The word ODM has drifted. In most of the industry it now means a factory hands you its existing styles, you swap a colorway or substitute a fabric, and that is the extent of the development work. It is fast and cheap, but the design isn't yours. Designer-led brands looking for an ODM partner read "from your moodboard" on a factory site and assume that's what they'll get — then realize the catalog version is what's actually on offer.

That distinction shapes everything downstream. When a brand sends a moodboard with three reference garments, two fabric directions, and a silhouette note, Deepwove's pattern team builds the pattern from scratch. The fabric sourcing specialists run a parallel hunt across mill partners — a real founder pain that often eats more weeks than the sampling itself. The first sample is reviewed against the brand's reference, not against a factory archive. Most styles reach approved sample in 2-3 development iterations; first-round approvals are not uncommon when the brief is tight.

ODM development at Deepwove is a single continuous track inside one studio. The brief doesn't bounce between an agent, a factory representative, and a third-party sourcing house. Designers, pattern makers, and fabric sourcing specialists sit in the same room — 4 pattern makers, 4 designers, and 2 fabric sourcing specialists, all full-time in Hangzhou.

1. Brief intake (48 hours) A moodboard, sketch, or technical sketch lands. A proposal returns within 48 hours — covering fabric direction, construction strategy, sample timeline, and indicative cost band.
2. Fabric sourcing (+1 week, 2 weeks total) The two-person sourcing team runs a parallel hunt across the mill network. Swatches go to the brand for sign-off before a single sample is cut.
3. Pattern development Pattern makers draft from the moodboard or reference garment — not by retrofitting an existing block. Draping happens in the same room as the fitting.
4. First sample (within 1 week of fabric arrival) Samples ship within one week 90% of the time when fabric is on hand. The first sample is reviewed against the brand's brief, not the factory's archive.
5. Iteration (2–3 rounds typical) Most styles reach approved sample in 2–3 iterations. Single-round approvals happen when the brief is specific enough.
6. Production (6–8 weeks first orders, from 100 pieces) The approved sample routes to the factory in Deepwove's group whose construction discipline matches — woven, knit, or specialty. First-order bulk runs 6–8 weeks. Reorders against locked patterns and fabric on hand compress to 2–4 weeks. Minimum order quantity is 100 pieces per style.

Production lead time on a custom ODM run lands at 3 months from brief to ship-out from Hangzhou. Phase 1 sampling and fabric sourcing runs 1 to 6 weeks; phase 2 first-order production runs 6 to 8 weeks; goods are packed and ready to ship from Hangzhou around the 12-week mark. Shipping to your warehouse is your choice and runs separately — air freight to North America 7 to 10 days, sea freight to USWC or AU 4 weeks, sea freight to USEC 4 weeks. When the development relationship continues into ongoing seasonal production, that work converts naturally to OEM execution — same factories, same pattern files, lower per-cycle overhead.