On her fifth day, Meher was handed a PDF with fourteen pages and one instruction.

“Start the sample,” said her manager, already walking away. “Buyer wants it in nine days.”

She opened the file at her desk. It was a men’s polo, a style number she’d never seen, from a buyer she’d only heard about in meetings. Page one had a sketch. Page two had a table of measurements. Page three had a list of materials, and so on, through stitch details, labels, packaging, a page of photographs with red circles and arrows, and a final page called Revision History that she skipped because it looked like admin.

She was careful. She read every page in order, from the top, the way she’d read a textbook. She noted the fabric, ordered a swatch from the mill, briefed the sample room, and wrote “polo, short sleeve, per tech pack” on the work order. By the end of day six, the sample room had cut a pattern.

On day twelve, the sample reached the buyer. On day fifteen, the comments came back.

“Body length 3 cm short. Sleeve length OK. Collar height wrong, should be 7 cm. Placket length incorrect. Label is not at centre back neck. Why is the hem stitched with a single needle when the construction page specifies cover stitch? Please resubmit.”

Meher read the email three times. Every one of those things was in the tech pack. She’d looked at the page. She just hadn’t read it, not in the way that mattered.

When she told her senior colleague, Imtiaz, he didn’t sound surprised. “Let me guess. You started at page one and went to the end.”

“Yes.”

“That’s how everyone does it,” he said. “It’s also the slowest way to find the mistakes. Come, I’ll show you how I read one. It takes about forty minutes, and you’ll never start a sample from a tech pack you haven’t read this way.”

This is the article Imtiaz gave her, over the next hour, on a whiteboard. It’s the first in a series for people starting their careers in merchandising. And the first skill, before costing, before T&As, before any negotiation, is the one that sounds easiest and goes wrong most often: reading a tech pack.

What a tech pack is

A technical package, or tech pack, is the buyer’s instruction manual for making one style. It’s the document that turns a design idea into something a factory can build, cost and inspect. It usually comes as a PDF or spreadsheet, sometimes through a buyer’s online system, and it typically covers:

• What the garment looks like (sketches or flat drawings)
• What it’s made of (the bill of materials)
• How it’s put together (construction and stitching details)
• How big it must be (measurements and tolerances)
• How it should be finished (labels, packaging, wash and care)
• How it will be judged (quality standards, tests, inspection rules)

Think of it as a contract written in diagrams and tables. Once you start a sample or a production order, the tech pack is what the buyer will hold you to.

What it is not is a perfect document. Tech packs are written by people under time pressure, edited by several hands, and often copied from the previous season’s style. They contain gaps, contradictions, outdated lines and the occasional leftover from a completely different garment. A merchandiser’s first job with a tech pack isn’t to follow it. It’s to interrogate it.

The anatomy of a tech pack

Every buyer’s format differs, but most contain the same sections. Here’s what each one tells you, and what to check in it.

1. The cover page and style information

This page tells you who the garment is for and what it’s called: style number, season, description, size range, colours, brand, and the buyer’s contact. It often includes target dates, such as sample due dates and ex-factory.

What to check: Does the style number match your work order? Is the size range what you were told in the meeting? Is the season and delivery date consistent with the T&A you were given? A surprising number of early mistakes come from a style number copied from the wrong file.

2. Flat sketches and design details

Usually the second page: front and back drawings of the garment laid flat, with call-outs pointing to details such as collar shape, pocket position, placket length, seam locations and embellishments.

What to check: Look at the sketch as if you had to draw it yourself. Where would you put each seam? Is there anything the drawing shows that the text doesn’t mention, or the other way round? Sketches show intent. They are rarely to scale, so never measure a garment from a drawing. The measurements page decides sizes.

3. The bill of materials (BOM)

The BOM lists everything that goes into the garment: main fabric, contrast fabric, lining, interlining, thread, buttons, zips, labels, hangtags, polybags, cartons, stickers. For each item it usually states a description, a supplier or reference, a colour, and sometimes a quantity.

For the main fabric, look for composition (for example 100 percent cotton), weight (GSM, with its tolerance), width, construction (single jersey, pique, twill), and finish (enzyme wash, brushed, peached).

What to check: Is there a weight and a tolerance? Is the width stated? Is the colour referenced to a standard such as a Pantone code or a buyer’s swatch? And crucially, is the consumption blank? Buyers often leave it empty or put “TBC”, expecting the factory to calculate it. That calculation is yours, and it feeds directly into costing.

4. Construction and stitching details

This is the how-to part: how the garment is assembled. It names seam types, stitch types, stitches per inch or per centimetre, seam allowances, topstitching positions and special requirements such as bar tacks or reinforcement.

You’ll see stitch types written as numbers. A few common ones:

• 301, the lockstitch used for most woven seams and topstitching
• 401, a chainstitch
• 504, a three-thread overlock for edge finishing and seaming knits
• 406 or 602, cover stitches, common for hems on knits

What to check: Does the machine type the buyer asks for match the machines your factory has? A hem specified as cover stitch needs a cover stitch machine, not a single-needle lockstitch, which is exactly what Meher got wrong. Are the stitches-per-inch figures stated? Is there a seam allowance for each seam? If a detail is described in words on one page and drawn differently on another, note it.

5. The measurement specification

This is the heart of the tech pack and the page most worth reading slowly. It’s a table of points of measure (POMs), each with a target measurement and a tolerance, usually for a base size, with a grading page for the other sizes.

Here is a simplified, illustrative spec for a plain men’s crew-neck T-shirt (simpler than Meher’s polo), size M, in centimetres:

Notice two things. Each measurement has a definition: “from high point shoulder”, “2.5 cm below armhole”. The number means nothing without it. And each has a tolerance, the amount the finished garment may differ from the target and still pass.

What to check: The measuring point for every line. Body length can be measured from the high point shoulder, from the centre back neck, or from the shoulder seam, and each gives a different number for the same garment. This was the cause of Meher’s “3 cm short” comment. The pattern was cut to a length measured from the wrong point. Also check the units, whether the buyer uses centimetres or inches, and whether the measurements are for the garment before or after washing.

6. Grading

The grade page shows how measurements change from size to size, for example chest width growing by 2 cm per size. It lets the sample room and pattern maker produce a full size run.

What to check: Does the base size sit in the middle of the range? Are any grade steps unusually large or small? Is there a size set sample requirement, where the buyer wants all sizes in one stage of approval?

7. Colour, print and artwork

If the style has colourways, prints, embroidery or labels with artwork, this page defines them. It should give colour references, artwork files, dimensions, placement (for example “centre chest, 7 cm below the neckline”) and the print method.

What to check: Is every artwork placement dimensioned? Does the colour reference apply to all colourways or just one? Is the print method stated, such as screen print, heat transfer or embroidery? Each has a different cost and lead time.

8. Labels, hangtags and packaging

The buyer’s rules for how the garment is finished and packed: which labels go where, how the garment is folded, how many go in a polybag, how many polybags in a carton, and what goes on the carton markings.

What to check: Label position, including its distance from seams. Care label content and language requirements. Folding method and any tissue or card inserts. Packing ratio by size and colour. Carton dimensions and weight limits. These details change both cost and shipping.

9. Wash, care and test requirements

This section sets what the garment must go through, such as the wash process, and what it must pass, such as shrinkage limits, colourfastness grades, pilling, seam strength and any restricted substance requirements.

What to check: Which tests apply at fabric stage and which at garment stage? What are the pass marks? Does the care label match the wash process? If the tech pack says “per buyer’s test manual”, make sure you have that manual and the right version.

10. Quality standards

Many tech packs state or refer to the buyer’s inspection standard: the AQL, the defect classification, and sometimes photographs of acceptable and unacceptable examples.

What to check: The AQL levels for critical, major and minor defects, and which inspection level applies. If it isn’t in the tech pack, find out where it is. You don’t want to learn the buyer’s standard at final inspection.

11. Revision history and comments

The page Meher skipped. It records every change since the first version: what was altered, when, and why. It often includes comments from previous sample rounds.

What to check: First, make sure you have the latest version. Then read what changed. A change log is a map to the buyer’s priorities and sore points. If the collar height was changed twice, the buyer cares about the collar.

The three-pass method

Now back to the whiteboard. What Imtiaz showed Meher was a method, not a checklist. He read each tech pack three times, for three different purposes.

Pass one: orient (10 minutes)

Don’t study anything yet. Flip through the whole file and answer five questions.

1. What is this garment, in one sentence?
2. What’s unusual about it compared with a standard version of that style?
3. What are the dates?
4. Which sections are complete, and which are blank or marked “TBC”?
5. Is this the latest version?

Write the answers on a sheet of paper. This pass gives you a map, so the detailed reading has somewhere to land. It’s also where you spot the most dangerous problems, like a missing measurement page or a revision history showing the file is three versions old.

Pass two: cross-check (20 minutes)

This is the pass that would have saved Meher two weeks. Now you read across the document, not down it. Take each important feature and check that every section tells the same story about it.

• Sketch vs measurement. Does the drawing show a pocket, and does the measurement page include its size and position?
• Measurement vs construction. If the hem is 2.5 cm, does the construction page describe a hem that produces that width?
• Construction vs BOM. If the seams need a particular thread or elastic, is it listed?
• BOM vs packaging. Does the polybag size suit the folded garment?
• Colour page vs BOM. Does every colourway have matching fabric, thread and trim references?
• Test page vs fabric. Is the fabric weight and composition in the BOM consistent with the requirements on the test page?

Whenever two sections disagree, or one is silent where the other speaks, write the conflict on your sheet. By the end you’ll have a list of questions that nobody else has noticed yet.

Pass three: cost and plan (10 minutes)

Now read as a merchandiser, not just a reader. Ask what the tech pack means for money and time.

• Consumption. From the measurements, work out fabric per piece. For the T-shirt above, body length 72, sleeve length 22 and half-chest 54 with allowances give about 1.14 square metres, roughly 205 grams at 180 GSM before wastage. If the BOM leaves consumption blank, this is your first costing job.
• Trims and packaging. List every trim, and flag any that are special, imported or have long lead times.
• Operations. Count the construction steps and note any that need special machines. These drive cut-and-make cost.
• Processes. Print, embroidery, wash and special finishes each add cost and time.
• Tests. Note every required test, and what it will cost.
• Approvals. List every approval the buyer controls, such as lab dips, fit samples and trim approval, and when each is needed. This is the start of your T&A.

If you’ve read the earlier articles in this blog, you’ll recognise the links. The measurement tolerance and the GSM tolerance both feed cost. The approvals list sets the T&A. The quality section sets how you’ll plan inspection. The tech pack is where all of it begins.

Writing down the questions

At the end of pass two, you’ll have a list of conflicts and gaps. Now comes a habit that separates good juniors from struggling ones: ask once, clearly, in one message.

Don’t send the buyer a trickle of emails, one question at a time. Collect everything into a single numbered list, grouped by section, with the page reference and a proposed answer wherever you can. For example:

Notice the last line. It sets a clock, and it protects you if the answer never comes. Proposing an answer, rather than only asking, shows that you’ve thought about it and makes it easy for the buyer to say “yes”.

Common traps

A few mistakes catch nearly every junior at least once.

Reading an old version. The file in your email and the one on the buyer’s system may differ. Always confirm the version number and date.

Assuming “same as previous style”. Tech packs often say things like “as per style 3302.” Get that older document, check which version it is, and verify that nothing has changed.

Mixing units. A table in centimetres next to one in inches, or a seam allowance in millimetres. Convert and double-check before cutting a pattern.

Ignoring tolerance. A measurement with no stated tolerance isn’t “exact”. It’s undefined, and the buyer’s inspector will apply their own. Ask.

Missing the colourway differences. A style that comes in three colours may have different trims, thread or print placement for each. The BOM may only describe the first.

Trusting the sketch for dimensions. The drawing is a picture, not a plan.

Skipping the revision history. It tells you what the buyer worries about most.

Your first-week checklist

If you remember nothing else, take this list to your desk.

• Confirm the version and date of the tech pack.
• Do pass one and answer the five orientation questions.
• Check every point of measure for its definition and tolerance.
• Cross-check sketch, measurements, construction, BOM and packaging.
• Note every blank, “TBC” or contradictory line.
• Calculate fabric consumption from the measurements.
• List all trims, processes, tests and approvals.
• Send one consolidated, numbered question list with proposed answers.
• Start your T&A from the approval list.
• File the questions and the answers together with the tech pack.

The honest limits

Every buyer’s tech pack is different, and some are excellent while others are barely usable. The structure and the examples here are a general guide, not a standard, and the measurements and stitch types are illustrative. Your buyer’s format, definitions and terminology may differ, and some buyers keep key rules in separate manuals. When in doubt, ask. Experienced merchandisers ask questions constantly, and the good ones aren’t embarrassed to.

Back to Meher

The second sample took nine days, and this time Meher did it differently. She spent forty minutes on the three passes before she briefed anyone. She found six conflicts: the body length measuring point, the collar height listed twice with different numbers, a hem described as cover stitch on one page and single-needle on another, a main label with no position, a thread colour missing for the contrast panel, and a revision history showing that the buyer had changed the placket length in the last update, which hadn’t reached her copy.

She sent one email, with the questions numbered and a proposed answer for each. The buyer replied the next morning. Four of her proposals were accepted as written. Two were corrected.

The second sample passed on its first review. The buyer’s comment was a single line: “Good, thank you.”

Meher keeps the whiteboard photograph from that day on her phone. It has three columns, headed Orient, Cross-check and Cost and plan, and a note in the corner in Imtiaz’s handwriting. It says: Don’t read it. Question it.

That’s the whole skill, and it’s the first one worth learning. A tech pack isn’t a set of instructions to follow from page one. It’s a claim about a garment, made by someone under pressure, and your job is to find out whether it adds up before anyone cuts a single piece of cloth.