What this guide covers
- The three models defined: who sources what
- Control, cost, and complexity compared
- Why beginners often start full-package
- When CMT actually saves money
- The Handoff Line: your decision framework
- Frequently asked questions
Here’s the problem this guide fixes.
You have a design. You want it made. So you email a factory and ask for a price.
The number comes back, and it means nothing because you don’t know what’s inside it.
Is fabric included?
Who buys the trims?
Who makes the pattern?
Who catches it if the stitching is off?
That confusion isn’t a small thing. It’s the exact gap that makes new brands overpay, lose control of their product, or blow their launch timeline.
The root cause is simple: founders don’t know how much of the work a factory can take off their plate or how much they should let it.
There are three standard answers, and this guide walks through all three: CMT, FOB, and full-package.
They’re just three different ways to split the work between you and the factory.
By the end, you’ll know exactly what each one includes, what it costs you in money and control, and using a framework we’ll build called The Handoff Line, which one fits your brand right now.
We run a cut-and-sew floor in Sialkot. We quote all three models every week. So the examples here aren’t theory; they’re what we see land on the cutting table.
The three models defined who sources what
Chapter 1
Before we name the models, name the work. Every single garment, from a $12 tee to a $180 jacket, requires four jobs to get done. Always these four, in this order:
- Development: turning your idea into a production-ready spec, the tech pack, the patterns, and the fit samples.
- Sourcing and buying the raw materials: fabric, thread, zippers, drawcords, labels, and poly bags.
- Production, the actual making: cutting, sewing, finishing, pressing, packing.
- Quality checking it’s right: inline QC, final inspection, and any lab or compliance testing.
That’s it. Those four jobs never change. What changes between CMT, FOB, and full-package is one thing only: where you draw the line between the jobs you own and the jobs the factory owns.
Hold that idea. It’s the whole guide.
CMT: Cut, Make, Trim
CMT is the most stripped-down deal. You bring almost everything. The factory brings labor and machines.
In a true CMT arrangement, you own development, and you own sourcing.
You supply the finished patterns. You buy the fabric and have it delivered to the factory.
You buy the trims. The factory does exactly what the name says: cuts your fabric, makes (sews) the garment, and attaches the trims you sent.
You’re renting production capacity. Nothing more. If the fabric you sent is wrong, that’s your problem. If you underordered trims, the line stops and waits for you.
What CMT includes
- You provide patterns, graded specs, fabric, all trims, and usually the tech pack.
- Factory provides: cutting, sewing, finishing, packing, and basic in-house QC.
- You manage every supplier relationship except the sewing floor itself.
New to how a spec even gets built? Start with our breakdown of what a production-ready tech pack contains before you commit to sourcing your own materials.
FOB: Freight On Board (the sourcing-included model)
FOB is where the factory steps up and takes sourcing off your hands. This is the model most people mean when they say “the factory handles materials.”
Under FOB, you own the development. The factory owns sourcing, production, and quality.
You hand over an approved tech pack and patterns. The factory sources the fabric and trims to your spec, cuts, sews, finishes, inspects, and delivers the finished goods ready to ship.
You get one price per finished unit, and you get one point of contact.
The name itself is a shipping term: goods placed “free on board” the vessel, but in apparel it’s shorthand for “full production with materials included; you own the design.”
What FOB includes
- You provide an approved tech pack, patterns, and fit sign-off.
- Factory provides: material sourcing, cutting, sewing, finishing, QC, and a finished-goods price.
- You manage one relationship with the factory plus your own design decisions.
Once you’re comparing quotes across models, our guide to reading a factory quote line by line walks through what’s really included so you don’t compare a CMT number against an FOB number by mistake.
Full-package: Full-Package Production (FPP)
The full package is the most hands-off deal for you. The factory takes everything, including the part FOB leaves with you: development.
In a full package, the factory owns development, sourcing, production, and quality.
You bring brief sketches, references, measurements, and sometimes just “a boxy heavyweight hoodie in this color, 400 gsm feel.”
The factory’s team turns that into a tech pack, drafts and grades the patterns, sources the materials, makes the fit samples, produces the run, and inspects it.
Their pattern makers and sourcing team do the heavy lifting you’d otherwise hire out.
This is the model that lets a founder with no technical background still ship a real product. It’s also the model people confuse most, so let’s kill that confusion now.
The FOB vs. full-package trap
This is the one distinction that trips up almost every founder, so read it twice. Both models include sourcing, so people use the terms interchangeably. They are not the same.
FOB = the factory sources and makes it, but YOU develop it. You must arrive with a finished tech pack and patterns. Full-package = the factory also develops. You can arrive with a napkin sketch. The line between them is not materials it’s who builds the spec. If a factory says “FOB” but is drafting your patterns for you, you’re really buying full-package, and it should be priced like it.
If you don’t yet have production-ready patterns and want the factory to develop them, our full-package onboarding guide covers what a good brief looks like.
Who owns what at a glance
| The job | CMT | FOB | Full-package |
|---|---|---|---|
| Development tech pack, patterns, samples |
You | You | Factory |
| Sourcing fabric, trims, labels |
You | Factory | Factory |
| Production cut, sew, finish, pack |
Factory | Factory | Factory |
| Quality QC, inspection, compliance |
Shared | Factory | Factory |
Read that table from top to bottom, and you can see the pattern: as you move CMT → FOB → full-package, the line moves up, and the factory takes on more.
That movement is exactly what Chapter 5 turns into a decision. For now, just hold the shape.
Three models. Four jobs. One line that decides where the factory takes over.
Control, cost, and complexity compared
Chapter 2
Now the trade-offs. Every founder wants the same three things: low cost, high control, and low hassle. You can’t max all three. Each model trades one for another. Here’s the honest math on each.
Cost: the number that lies to you
On paper, CMT is the cheapest per unit. You’re paying only for labor, so the sewing price looks tiny next to an FOB or full-package quote. This is why founders chase it.
But the per-unit sewing price is not your real cost. Your real cost is the total landed cost: every rupee and dollar it took to get finished goods in a box. And in CMT, a lot of that cost is hidden in the work you now own:
- You pay for the fabric, and you pay with your buying power, which as a small brand is weak. The factory buys fabric at volumes you can’t touch.
- You pay for fabric MOQs. Mills often won’t sell you less than a roll or a dye-lot minimum, so you buy more than you need and eat the leftovers.
- You pay to hold inventory. Your cash is tied up in fabric sitting in a warehouse before a single unit is sold.
- You pay for your own mistakes. Wrong shrinkage, wrong hand-feel, and short-shipped trims are all yours.
FOB and full-package fold most of that into one price. The factory’s buying power, MOQs, and float are working for you. The number looks bigger, but it can be lower landed, especially at small volumes.
From our floor
For a first run, most streetwear brands come out cheaper on FOB than CMT, even though the CMT sewing price looks lower. The reason is boring but real: at 50–300 pieces, a brand’s own fabric buying power can’t beat a factory’s. CMT’s savings show up later, at volume which is Chapter 4.
Control what you gain by keeping the work
Control runs the opposite way to convenience. The more you hand off, the less you decide.
- CMT gives you the most control. You chose that exact fabric from that exact mill. You picked the specific YKK zipper. Nobody substituted anything. For a brand whose whole story is a particular material or handfeel, that control is the point.
- FOB gives you design control but not material control. The factory sources to your spec, but if your spec says “heavyweight French terry, ~400gsm,” they choose which mill and which exact quality hits that. Good factories nail it. But it’s their call, not yours.
- A full package gives you the least material and technical control. You approved a sample; the factory decided how to get there. In exchange, you didn’t have to know how.
Control isn’t automatically good. Control you can’t use is just risk. Picking a fabric mill only helps if you actually know which mill is right.
Otherwise, you’ve kept a decision you’re not equipped to make, and that’s the whole insight behind Chapter 5.
Complexity: the load you carry
This is the trade-off founders forget until it’s too late. Every job you keep is a set of relationships, decisions, and failure points you now manage.
- CMT: high complexity. You’re juggling a fabric mill, a trims supplier, a label maker, a pattern maker, and the sewing factory and coordinating their timing so fabric arrives before the line is booked. Miss one, the whole thing stalls.
- FOB: medium-low complexity. One relationship: the factory. You manage design and approvals; they manage the supply chain.
- Full-package: lowest complexity. One relationship, and they even carry the development. You manage the brief and the money.
Cost, control, complexity. Pick the two that fit your brand; you can’t have all three.
The trade-off, in one table
| Factor | CMT | FOB | Full-package |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per-unit sewing price | Lowest | Higher | Highest |
| Landed cost at low volume | Often higher | Often lowest | Competitive |
| Landed cost at high volume | Lowest | Medium | Higher |
| Your control | Highest | Medium | Lowest |
| Your complexity / load | Highest | Low | Lowest |
| Cash tied in inventory | Highest | Low | Low |
| Skill you must already have | Sourcing + tech | Tech / design | Just a brief |
| Typical STITCH·LAB MOQ | 50 pcs* | 50 pcs* | 50 pcs* |
Why beginners often start with the full package
Chapter 3
Almost every brand we onboard for the first time starts on a full package. Not because they’re lazy. Because it’s the only model that matches what a beginner actually has. Here’s the real reasoning.
1. It doesn’t require a skill you don’t have yet
To run CMT, you need to already know how to source. Which fabric weight? Which mill. What shrinkage to expect. How much trim should I buy?
A first-time founder doesn’t know these things and shouldn’t pretend to. Full-package lets the factory’s team, who do this daily, make those calls.
You’re not skipping the work. You’re renting expertise you haven’t built yet.
2. It fits low MOQs and low cash
A new brand orders small. At 50 pieces, buying your own fabric is brutal.
Mills want minimums far above what you need, so you’d buy rolls to make a handful of hoodies.
Full-package (and FOB) lets you ride the factory’s material scale instead. Your cash goes into finished products you can sell, not fabric sitting in storage.
3. It floats your development
Patterns and samples cost money and take iterations. In a full package, the factory carries that development inside the deal.
You’re not paying a separate pattern maker and hoping their draft is sewable. The people making the pattern are the people sewing it, so it usually is.
4. It’s one relationship, not five
A first launch is already overwhelming. “Full package” means one point of contact owns the outcome.
If something’s wrong, there’s no finger-pointing between your fabric supplier and your sewing floor. It’s the factory’s job, start to finish.
Beginners start full-package because it matches what they have: a vision, a budget, and no supply chain yet.
The honest downside
We promised honesty, so here it is. A full package costs you three things:
- Margin. You pay for the convenience. Per unit, the full package is the priciest model. That’s fine while volumes are small, but it caps how cheap you can go.
- Control. You’re trusting the factory’s material and construction choices. A great factory earns that trust. A careless one hides corners in it. Vet hard, and always approve a physical sample before bulk.
- Dependency. If all the know-how lives in your factory and you never learn it, switching factories later is painful. Treat your first runs as an apprenticeship: learn your fabrics, your GSM, and your fits so you’re not helpless later.
Started full-package and wondering when to graduate? That’s the next chapter.
When CMT actually saves money
Chapter 4
CMT has a reputation as the “cheap” model. It can be. But only when specific conditions are true. Get them wrong, and CMT costs you more than the full package. Here’s exactly when the savings are real.
Condition 1: You have real volume
CMT’s whole advantage is cutting out the factory’s material margin. That margin is a percentage.
On 50 pieces, the rupees saved are trivial and don’t cover the extra work and risk you took on. On 5,000 pieces, that same percentage is a serious number.
There’s no universal magic threshold; it depends on your product and fabric, but the direction is fixed: CMT saves money as volume climbs and loses money when volume is low.
If you’re not ordering in the thousands per style, CMT’s math usually doesn’t clear.
Condition 2: You have sourcing relationships and buying power
The reason a factory can beat your fabric price is buying power.
To flip that, you need your own. Brands that win with CMT usually have a direct mill relationship, a repeat fabric they buy in bulk, and a price the factory can’t match because they’re now buying at scale.
No mill relationship, no buying power, and you’re just paying retail for fabric while doing the factory’s job for free. That’s negative savings.
Condition 3: You own your patterns and specs
CMT assumes you arrive fully developed. Finished patterns. Locked specs. Known shrinkage. If you’re still iterating fits, CMT is the wrong tool you’ll be paying to redo cut fabric you already bought. CMT rewards brands whose product is settled and repeating, not brands still figuring out the fit.
The margin math, simply
Picture the same hoodie two ways. Numbers are illustrative; use your real quotes.
| FOB (all-in) | CMT (you source fabric) | |
|---|---|---|
| Factory charge/unit | $14.00 | $6.00 (sew only) |
| Your fabric + trims/unit | — (included) | $9.50 at low volume |
| Landed unit @ 100 pcs | $14.00 | $15.50 |
| Your fabric + trims/unit | — (included) | $6.50 at high volume |
| Landed unit @ 5,000 pcs | ~$12.50 | $12.50 |
See the flip? At 100 pieces, FOB wins; CMT’s low sewing price gets buried under weak fabric buying power.
At scale, your buying power catches up, and CMT pulls ahead. That crossover is the entire CMT decision.
When CMT quietly costs you more
The hidden bill nobody quotes you.
- Dead stock. Fabric MOQs force overbuying. Leftover rolls are cash on a shelf.
- Coordination time. Your hours chasing five suppliers have a value. Count it.
- Risk transfer. Every sourcing mistake is now yours to eat, not the factory’s.
- Slower launches. Sourcing your own materials adds lead time you controlled poorly the first few times.
CMT saves money when you have volume, buying power, and settled patterns. Miss any one and it costs more, not less.
The Handoff Line: your decision framework
Chapter 5 · The framework
Everything so far leads here. Now we turn it into a decision you can make in ten minutes. We call it the Handoff Line.
Here’s the reframe that makes it work.
Most founders pick a model by ambition: “CMT is cheapest per unit, so I’ll do CMT.” That’s backwards.
It picks the model based on the margin you want, not the capability you have, and it’s why brands end up in models they can’t actually run.
You don’t choose a production model. Your weakest owned stage chooses it for you.
The Handoff Line flips the logic.
Remember the four jobs from Chapter 1: Development, Sourcing, Production, and Quality.
The Handoff Line is simply the point where you stop owning the work and hand it to the factory. Draw that line at the first job you can’t confidently own.
Everything from that job down goes to the factory. Where the line lands is your model.
The method, in three steps
Step 1: Score each stage. Can you truly own it?
Go down the four jobs in order. For each, you must be able to say yes to both questions, or you don’t own it.
- Capability: Do you have the skill to do this right? (Know how to draft a pattern / pick a mill / etc.)
- Capacity: Do you have the time, cash, and volume to do it well right now?
One “no” on either question means you can’t own that stage.
Note that production is a special case: almost nobody owns a factory, and you’re not expected to, so production is effectively always handed off. The real decision is about development and sourcing.
Step 2: Find your line
Your Handoff Line sits at the first stage where the answer is “no.” You keep everything above it. The factory takes everything from that stage down.
Step 3: Read your model off the line
The Handoff Line — where your line lands is your model
Go top to bottom. Stop at the first stage you can’t confidently own. That’s your line.
1
Development
Can you arrive with a production-ready tech pack and patterns?
No here → Full-package
2
Sourcing
Can you source fabric + trims yourself, at good prices, at your volume?
Yes to 1, No here → FOB
3
Production
Do you own a sewing floor? (Almost nobody does — this is the factory’s job.)
Yes to 1 & 2 → CMT
4
Quality
Always shared with or owned by the factory that made it.
Factory-side in every model
Line above Development → Full-package
Line above Sourcing → FOB
Line above Production → CMT
Three outcomes, and each maps to exactly one model:
- Can’t confidently own development? Your line is at the top. Hand off everything, development included. → Full-package.
- Own development, but can’t own sourcing? Your line sits below development. You bring the spec; they source and make. → FOB.
- Own Development AND Sourcing? Your line sits low. You only hand off the sewing itself. → CMT.
The CMT double-check
Even if you can own both development and sourcing, CMT still has to pay. Before you commit, run the Chapter 4 gate:
- Are you ordering at real volume (thousands, not hundreds)?
- Do you have genuine fabric buying power or a mill relationship?
- Are your patterns settled and repeating, not still in flux?
Three yeses: CMT saves you money. A no on any: you technically could run CMT, but FOB will likely land cheaper and simpler. Capability lets you choose CMT; economics tells you whether to.
Worked example
A founder DMs us: streetwear label, first drop, one heavyweight hoodie, wants 120 pieces.
They have strong graphics and a clear vibe. No tech pack. Never sourced fabric. Budget is tight.
Run the line:
- Development? No tech pack, no patterns, no experience drafting them. Can’t own it. Line stops here.
Line is at the top → full-package. Correct call. They ship a clean hoodie without pretending to have skills they don’t have, and they learn their fabrics along the way.
Two years later, the same founder has three proven styles, reordering the same 400 gsm terry every season, now moving 4,000 pieces a drop, and they’ve built a direct mill contact. Re-run the line:
- Development? Own it. Patterns are locked. Keep going.
- Sourcing? Own it: mill relationship, volume, buying power. Keep going.
- Production? No factory of their own → hand off.
Line sits just above Production → CMT. And the double-check passes: volume, buying power, settled patterns. Now CMT saves them real margin.
Same founder. Same brand.
The right model changed because their capabilities changed.
That’s the entire point of The Handoff Line: it moves as you grow, so you re-run it at every stage of the brand, not just once.
Run the line today. Run it again next year. The model that fits you now is not the model that fits you at scale.
Where this leaves you
Three models. Four jobs. One line. If you remember nothing else, CMT, FOB, and full-package are just three places to draw the line between what you own and what the factory owns, and the right place is set by your weakest owned stage, not the margin you’re chasing.
Run the Handoff Line on your own brand right now. Be honest about capability and capacity. Where your line lands is your model. And when you outgrow it, run it again.
If you’re not sure where your line falls, that’s a normal place to be, and it’s a conversation we have every week. Tell us your product, your volume, and where you’re at, and we’ll tell you straight which model fits, no upsell.
What did we miss? If there’s a sourcing question this guide didn’t answer, send it over; we’ll update this page from real founder questions.
Frequently asked questions
What's the real difference between FOB and full-package?
Both include material sourcing, which is why they get confused. The difference is development. With FOB, you arrive with a finished tech pack and patterns; the factory sources and makes to your spec. With the full package, the factory also develops and drafts your patterns and builds the tech pack from your brief. If a factory quotes “FOB” but is drafting your patterns, you’re actually buying a full package, and it should be priced that way.
Is CMT always the cheapest option?
No. CMT has the lowest sewing price, but that’s not your total cost. At low volumes, a small brand’s fabric buying power is weak, so your landed cost under CMT is often higher than an all-in FOB price. CMT saves money only when you have real volume, genuine sourcing, buying power, and settled patterns. Miss anyone, and it usually costs more.
Which model should a brand-new streetwear label start with?
Usually full-package. A first-time founder rarely has production-ready patterns or sourcing relationships and orders small, all of which fit a full package and none of which fit CMT. A full package lets the factory carry out development and sourcing while you learn. You can graduate to FOB or CMT later as your capability grows. Run The Handoff Line in Chapter 5 to confirm.
What's the minimum order for each model?
At GIBBEN CLOTHING, the canonical MOQ is 50 pieces per style for most apparel and 100 pieces for outerwear and headwear. The model you choose affects economics more than the minimum CMT in particular, only makes financial sense well above MOQ, at real volume.
Can I switch models as my brand grows?
Yes, and you should. The Handoff Line is designed to be re-run. A brand that starts full-package often moves to FOB once it can develop its own tech packs and then to CMT once it has volume and a mill relationship. The right model tracks your capability, so re-check it at each growth stage rather than locking in once.
What do I actually need to bring to get an FOB quote?
A production-ready tech pack and approved patterns, at minimum because under FOB you own development. If you only have sketches or references, you’re really looking at full-package, where the factory builds the spec for you.