Silueta/Glossary/Tech pack

Glossary

Tech pack

noun · the production blueprint for a garment

A tech pack is the document a factory uses to produce a garment. It includes measurements, materials, stitching specifications, colorways, label and tag placement, and a bill of materials. It is the engineering drawing of fashion. Think of it as the blueprint that translates a creative vision into a manufacturable product. Without a tech pack, a factory has no reliable way to produce what the designer intended, and the result is typically a sample that misses the mark on fit, fabric, construction, or all three. A complete tech pack for a single garment usually runs four to eight pages and covers several critical sections. The first is the flat sketch or technical drawing, which shows the garment from the front, back, and any relevant detail views like collar construction or pocket placement. These are not artistic illustrations; they are precise line drawings with callouts for every seam, stitch, and construction detail. The second section is the measurement spec, often called the spec sheet or graded size chart. This lists every key measurement, such as chest width, body length, sleeve length, shoulder width, and hem circumference, for each size in the run. The grading between sizes follows standard increments, but those increments vary by garment type and target fit. The third section covers materials: fabric type, weight, composition, color references (usually Pantone codes), and any special finishes like garment washing, enzyme treatment, or brushing. The fourth section is the bill of materials, which lists every component that goes into the finished garment beyond the main fabric: thread, zippers, buttons, labels, hang tags, poly bags, and any custom hardware. The fifth section details construction specifics: stitch type for each seam (flatlock, overlock, coverstitch, chain stitch), seam allowances, topstitching placement, and finishing techniques. Some tech packs also include a sixth section for packaging and folding instructions.

Tech packs are usually created by a designer or technical product developer, a role that most solo creators cannot afford to hire or execute themselves. A freelance technical designer typically charges $300 to $800 per tech pack depending on garment complexity, and the process takes one to three weeks including revisions. For a creator trying to launch a four-piece capsule, that is $1,200 to $3,200 and a month of lead time just for the documentation, before a single sample is cut. This cost and complexity is one of the least visible but most significant barriers to entry in fashion. A creator might have a clear vision for the product, an audience ready to buy, and even a manufacturer willing to produce it, but without a proper tech pack the factory cannot begin. Sending a factory a mood board and a sketch is not enough. Factories work from spec, and ambiguity in the spec means errors in the sample, which means additional rounds of sampling, which means more time and more money. The difference between a good tech pack and a bad one often shows up in the number of sample rounds required. A well-documented tech pack typically gets to an approved sample in one to two rounds. A vague or incomplete one can take four or five rounds, each costing $50 to $200 in sample fees plus two to three weeks of turnaround time. Multiply that across multiple styles in a collection and the cost of poor documentation compounds quickly. For creator-led fashion, the tech pack challenge is especially acute because the creator's value is in taste and audience, not in technical garment specification. Asking a content creator to produce a graded spec sheet with coverstitch callouts is like asking a chef to write the mechanical blueprints for a commercial kitchen. The skills do not overlap. This is exactly the gap Silueta fills. The platform auto-generates tech packs from the drop brief and the creator's aesthetic profile. The creator provides the creative direction, fabric preferences, fit references, and design details in plain language. Silueta translates that input into a factory-ready tech pack with proper technical drawings, graded measurements, material specs, and construction details. Every auto-generated tech pack is then reviewed by a human technical designer before it goes to the factory, ensuring accuracy without requiring the creator to learn garment engineering. The result is a tech pack process that takes hours instead of weeks and costs a fraction of the traditional freelancer model, removing one of the most stubborn bottlenecks between a creator's vision and a finished product.