How do you hire a fashion tech pack designer to give shape to your collection ideas? Also, the timing of when you should do it. If you ask me this, my answer would be “Ask yourself are you fully prepared to do this?’. What I meant is before you hunt for a freelance tech pack designer, your collection ideas should be ready. You should be ready with the collection and answers that a technical designer may have for you. Confused? Let me walk you through the process.
Putting Together Collection Line-Sheet With the Help of Freelance Tech Pack Designer
If you are serious about pursuing your apparel brand, you must stick to the process. This will be a little expensive in the beginning but going forward this will save a lot of time and money. The first step and most crucial step is to decide on your collection. Your collection must be in sync. Each style in the collection should relate to other styles in the collection. For example, you cannot have a bridal wear dress in the collection of activewear collection. Remember, you have to do this all by yourself. No designer or consultant should help you or do this for you. Because this is your vision and putting this on paper is your job. Refer to the post “How to give your style idea a shape” for more details
As you are a start-up apparel brand, we can understand the financial constraints. It is understandable if you lack funds in the beginning but that is not an excuse to skip tech pack design. This will only do worse to your brand development. A tech pack helps organize the sampling and production process and reduces time and money. A tech pack makes it easy for a clothing manufacturer in many ways and also dictates terms in your favor. Moreover, the manufacturer takes things seriously when you present your styles with tech packs.
Role of Freelance Tech Pack Designer
Once you prepare the collection line sheet, you are ready to move forward to the next step. The next step is preparing the technical design and spec sheet of your collection styles. This is the most crucial part of your brand development. You need to hire a freelance tech pack designer. Wondering why you need this and how this is going to help in your business? Well, a freelance fashion tech pack designer helps in putting together technical input. Technical input to your collection of ideas and vision. If Art is your vision, science is to convert it into reality, and commerce is to calculate how much cost took to do it. In short, you need all the streams to run a business.
Systematic and Organized Way of Presenting Style Idea:
Well now that you know you need a tech pack, you must be wondering why the heck you want this thing. A tech pack is a tool that sums up the information and presents it in a systematic and organized way. This helps clothing manufacturers and associated supporting units understand what to do. Tech pack explains garment detailing in a way that clothing manufacturer understands no matter where they are. Every detail of the design is mentioned in the tech pack to make it easy for the clothing manufacturer to follow. Having said that, it makes a tech pack designer job more and more responsible and detail-oriented. That is one of the reasons technical designer’s salaries are better than others in the garment industry.
The traditional way to source vendors is through trade shows and factory visits. All those will enable you to see the vendors and their product quality. However, If you are considering overseas vendors, there is a problem. It is even more expensive to meet vendors in person. The only way you can get in touch with them is online. The only way you can speak to any overseas vendor is if you are well prepared. A freelance tech pack designer can help you prepare your collection so that you are in a position to speak. Believe it or not, this is the only way you can deal with overseas clothing manufacturers.
The Best Way to Reach Overseas Clothing Manufacturers:
First of all, you need to be sure of what you want to produce. Approaching with vague queries like “I want to produce shirts how much does it cost?” will lead you nowhere. They don’t have time to speak to you over and again to understand your style. There are ample inquiries and every day they meet at least 3-4 new buyers. So you cannot go to a manufacturer without preparation. The best way to prepare is by being ready with a tech pack and spec sheet. You need to be specific and go to clothing manufacturers with tech packs even if you are approaching a small one. If you are ready with tech packs it becomes easier to get quotes from clothing manufacturers. The standard procedure for approaching clothing manufacturers is through tech packs. You can contact a fashion house or hire a freelance tech pack designer.
There are several websites and marketplaces there to confuse you. You will get hundreds of suppliers but none of them you can trust. And when you are hiring a company it is expensive for you as you are a start-up. So the only solution that you have is to find out freelance tech pack designer to support you throughout. This will help you prepare tech packs and be specific when you approach the manufacturer. Be sure to be prepared with the inputs that you can share with your clothing manufacturers. Because once you miss the chance it will be difficult to get hold of them. Get some Intel about the manufacturer before the meeting. Also, meet or contact them with your tech packs and most importantly order quantity. With the preparation, you can expect a decent quote and timeline from the manufacturer.
Online Store for Tech Pack and Apparel Graphics & Prints
Visit the tech pack template store if you are starting a brand with styles everyone using with your brand name or some graphics artwork to customize. You may buy the tech packs to send them to clothing manufacturers. With this tech pack template, you may add your graphic artwork and logos. You can save hundreds of dollars with these tech packs. The tech packs are developed professionally and are tested several times in the real-time production process.