Apparel Sourcing Glossary: The Factory Terms Buyers Hear

Every trade has a private language, and apparel sourcing speaks it fluently: a buyer who cannot parse the factory’s vocabulary negotiates at a disadvantage in every email. This glossary translates the terms you will actually meet, grouped by where they appear in an order’s life, in plain language a first-time buyer can use immediately. It closes this guide series for buyers in the USA, the UK, Germany, Canada and Australia working with a clothing manufacturer in Bangladesh.

Keep it beside the keyboard. Fluency in these few dozen terms changes how factories hear you, because buyers who speak the language are assumed to understand the answers, fairly or not, by everyone listening.

Specification and Product Terms

These are the words of the tech pack, the document every order is built from. Precision here prevents the most expensive misunderstandings in the industry.

• Tech pack: the complete specification document for a garment, measurements, materials, construction and branding
• POM: points of measure, the defined places where a garment is measured
• Tolerance: the permitted variation around a specified measurement
• Grading: the rule by which a pattern scales between sizes
• PP sample: the pre-production sample, made in actual fabric before bulk cutting
• Sealed sample: the approved sample both sides keep as the production standard
• Bulk: the main production run, as distinct from samples

The full vocabulary of services these terms serve is set out on the services page. Learn the specification words first; every later argument in sourcing is conducted in them, and won or lost there first.

Fabric Terms

Fabric language describes structure, weight and behaviour. These are the terms that appear in quotations, lab dips and the fabric discussions running through this whole guide series.

• GSM: grams per square metre, the standard weight measure for fabrics
• Single jersey, rib, interlock, pique, fleece: the common knit constructions
• Woven terms: twill, poplin, canvas, denim, named by their weave structures
• Lab dip: a small dyed sample submitted for colour approval
• Strike-off: the printed equivalent, a trial print for approval
• Hand feel: the tactile character of a fabric, judged against the approved standard
• Shrinkage: the dimensional change in washing, specified and tested as a percentage band

Fabric terms reward precision because fabric is most of the garment’s cost and nearly all of its character. A buyer fluent here specifies better, orders better and argues less.

Production Terms

On the floor and in the progress reports, production speaks in these words. They describe the journey from fabric roll to packed carton, stage by stage.

• Marker: the layout plan placing pattern pieces on fabric for cutting
• Lay: the stack of fabric layers cut together
• Bundle: cut panels grouped and ticketed for the sewing line
• SMV: standard minute value, the engineered time a garment’s operations should take
• Line balancing: arranging operations so the sewing line flows without queues
• Inline inspection: checking during production rather than only at its end
• AQL: acceptable quality level, the sampling standard by which lots are judged

Our production works to a standard minimum of 1,200 pieces per style in up to two colours, set out on the MOQ and production page. Terms like SMV explain how such runs are planned, costed and kept honest on the calendar.

Branding and Embellishment Terms

Where logos and decoration enter the garment, a second vocabulary applies, shared by printers, embroiderers and the factories coordinating them.

• Placement print: a design printed at one defined position on the garment
• All-over print: a design covering the fabric without a single placement
• Puff, discharge, plastisol, water-based: print types named by ink and effect
• Embroidery density and backing: the stitch fullness and its stabilising layer
• Pantone reference: the standard colour code artwork and inks are matched to
• Heat transfer: a design applied by heat and pressure rather than direct printing
• Neck print and woven label: the two commonest ways a brand signs a garment

Decoration terms matter because decoration is where brand identity becomes physical. Approving a strike-off or a stitch-out sample is this vocabulary’s practical examination, sat on every order.

Commercial and Shipping Terms

The order’s money and movement speak their own dialect, most of it inherited from international trade generally. These terms decide who pays, who risks and who arranges, so they repay exact understanding.

• FOB: free on board, the seller delivers to the vessel; the buyer carries it from there
• CIF: cost, insurance and freight included to the destination port
• EXW: ex works, the buyer collects from the factory gate
• LCL and FCL: less than, and full, container load shipping
• Lead time: the period from a defined start, usually order or approval, to readiness
• Proforma invoice: the preliminary invoice stating the order’s commercial terms
• Letter of credit: a bank instrument guaranteeing payment against documents

Who we are behind these terms is described on the about us page. The commercial vocabulary is deliberately standardised worldwide; a buyer who masters it once can trade in it anywhere garments are made.

Two warnings ride with this section. First, identical terms can still hide different local habits about documents and timing, so confirm the operational detail behind the word. Second, never let a familiar term substitute for reading the actual clause: the contract’s sentence outranks the glossary’s summary, every time, in every port on earth.

Using the Glossary Well

A glossary is a beginning, not a fluency. The terms become yours by use: in the next specification you write, the next sample evaluation, the next progress call. Three habits accelerate the learning beyond any list.

• Use the exact term in writing, even when a description would be easier
• Ask for definitions without embarrassment when a new term appears
• Keep your own additions; every programme develops local vocabulary
• Define terms inside your order documents rather than assuming them
• Teach the glossary to whoever joins your buying work next

Factories respect the buyer who asks what a word means far more than the one who nods at words they do not know. The nod is how wrong colours, wrong fabrics and wrong dates are born; the question is how they are prevented, cheaply, forever.

One more habit separates the fluent from the merely informed: pronunciation and usage in speech. Say the terms aloud on calls, slightly wrong at first, and let the factory correct you. Being corrected is the tuition; avoiding the terms to avoid correction is how buyers stay tourists in a trade they fund.

Quality and Testing Terms

Quality conversations have their own precise vocabulary, much of it borrowed from standards and laboratory practice. These terms appear in inspection reports and test results, where misunderstanding them is most expensive.

• Major and minor defects: faults classified by their effect on the garment’s use
• Defect rate: faults found expressed against the quantity inspected
• Shade band: the approved range of colour variation around the standard
• Colour fastness: resistance to washing, rubbing, light and perspiration, graded on standard scales
• Dimensional stability: the formal name for shrinkage behaviour under testing
• Needle detection: the metal-checking stage garments pass before packing
• Carton audit: the final check of packed goods against the packing list

Quality terms are where this glossary meets its purpose most directly: a buyer who can read an inspection report in its own language needs no interpreter at all between the facts and the decision.

People and Process Terms

Finally, the words for the humans and the hand-offs: who does what in the long chain between a buyer’s idea and a sealed carton.

• Merchandiser: the factory-side coordinator who carries an order through every stage
• Pattern master: the technician who creates and grades the patterns
• QC and QA: quality control on the goods, quality assurance on the system
• Cutting master: the specialist responsible for markers, lays and fabric economy
• Finishing: the final stages of trimming, checking, pressing and packing
• Handover: the documented transfer of an order or a stage between teams
• Reorder: a repeat of a proven style, the industry’s favourite word

Learn the people’s titles early. Addressing the right role by its right name, in the first email, quietly reclassifies you from tourist to professional in the factory’s estimation, and professionals get the straighter answers sooner.

From Glossary to Fluency

This glossary closes the Buyer How-To series, and its terms are the threads running back through every guide in it: vetting, questioning, sampling, communicating, visiting, recovering. Fluency is what those guides look like when they are combined in one buyer.

• Vetting is specification terms applied to a whole factory
• The twenty questions are this vocabulary arranged as curiosity
• Sample evaluation is fabric and production terms with a tape measure
• The scorecard is quality terms given a memory
• The recovery playbook is commercial terms under stress, holding
• The factory visit is every section of this glossary, standing up

Buyers who work through the series in order will find this list reads differently at the end than it would have at the beginning: less like a dictionary, more like a map of a country they have started to inhabit. That change of feeling is the actual product of the whole series, and it is yours to keep.

Frequently Asked Questions