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 in-house 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.

Most search results for a custom apparel manufacturer or a custom clothing supplier return one of two things. Designer-led brands fall into the gap between them — and lose a season figuring out which is which.

Deepwove is the custom clothing manufacturer that develops in-house. The product development team — 4 pattern makers, 4 designers, and 2 fabric sourcing specialists — works full-time in Hangzhou inside a manufacturing group of 30+ specialized factories. There is no agent layer between the brief and the factory floor. A custom apparel supplier that only routes orders can't draft a pattern from your moodboard or run a parallel fabric hunt; Deepwove does both, then delivers a proposal within 48 hours and a first sample within one week when fabric is on hand. The same development capability that built garments for brands like Reformation and Doen is the capability working your brief.

Because the same pattern team and the same factory inside the group carry a style from its first 100-piece run through every reorder, a construction detail holds as the volume grows — inspected to AQL 2.5 on a two-stage check through 100-to-300-piece runs, so the style that scales past 300 is still the style the brand approved.

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.