UK or Overseas, Honestly Compared

For most new brands, starting in the UK on stock blanks is the better first move, and overseas cut and sew is the better later one. White label from stock blanks starts at 25 garments, mixed, and takes four to six weeks from artwork approval. Overseas cut and sew is typically 100 per style per colour and three to four months, but it is the only one of the two that gets you your own pattern and your own fit.

We sit on one side of this, so here is the comparison as fairly as we can make it, including the places where the other side wins.

The question usually arrives as UK or overseas. The choice underneath it is stock blank or bespoke pattern.

White label means the garment already exists. We buy a premium blank from Stanley/Stella, Native Spirit or AS Colour, decorate it, take the supplier label out and stitch yours in. The garment was designed and made by someone else. Everything a customer sees as your brand is yours: the label, the care label, the swing ticket, the artwork and the packaging.

Overseas cut and sew means commissioning a garment that does not exist yet: your own pattern, your fabric, your trims, your fit. It starts with a tech pack, goes through sampling rounds and fit approvals, and ends with a production run made only for you. In the trade that is called private label, and it is a different job from white label. We do not cut and sew to your pattern. The full difference is on white label vs private label.

This is where the two routes are furthest apart. Overseas cut and sew is typically 100 per style per colour, before the fabric minimum. A first range of three styles in two colours is 600 garments. With white label, relabelling and finishing start at 25 garments with mixed styles counted together, so the same three styles can be a first drop of 25. The woven labels run at 100 per design, which is the label maker’s minimum, and the spares are held for your next order.

A first collection at 25 garments answers the question of what sells. A first collection at 600 asks the same question and charges you either way. More on how each layer’s minimum works in minimum order quantities explained.

White label from stock is four to six weeks from artwork approval. Woven labels take 7 to 10 working days from the label maker and run alongside production. Orders without labels are quicker, usually two to three weeks. Reorders take the same time as the first run.

Overseas cut and sew typically runs three to four months from tech pack to delivery once sampling and shipping are counted, and longer if a fit sample comes back wrong. That is three or four months with your money in production before a single garment can be sold.

With white label you can sample from a single garment, with your branding on it, and hold the real thing before you commit to a run. Samples are chargeable and are not credited against a later order. Because the garment already exists, what you are checking is the weight, the fit you have chosen from the range, and how your branding looks on it.

Overseas sampling is a bigger job because it is doing a bigger job. You are not checking a garment; you are proving a pattern. That means rounds of samples and fit approvals, and those costs sit on top of the production run. It is slower and costs more, and it is also the only way to get a garment nobody else makes.

Be clear about this one. If you want a fit that does not exist, a weight nobody makes or a construction detail that is the whole idea, stock blanks cannot give it to you. Cut and sew can. And with white label you do not own the pattern, which means somebody else can buy the same blank and put a different name in it. At the start that matters far less than founders expect. Later, for a brand whose fit is the product, it can matter a great deal.

Before deciding a fit does not exist, though, handle the ranges. They run from a 155gsm tee to the 500gsm AS Colour Made Hood (5151), with oversized and boxy cuts such as the Stanley/Stella Blaster 2.0 (STTU959), the Asher (STTU078) at 280gsm, the Native Spirit NS332 and the AS Colour Box Tee (5030). Every code is on the garments pages. Founders ask us for private label most weeks. Almost none of them mean it.

A 350gsm hoodie and a 400gsm hoodie look identical in a photograph and feel completely different when you pick them up. That is why we ask founders to come in. The unit is at Unit 2 Great Russell Court, Fieldhead Business Centre, Bradford BD7 1JZ, with parking on site, and mornings are quietest. You can put 180gsm, 240gsm and 280gsm tees side by side, see a woven label in a neck, and compare embroidery with print on the same piece.

From Leeds city centre it is around twenty to thirty minutes outside rush hour. From Manchester it is about an hour on the M62. From London, the train from King’s Cross is under three hours. That is a visit, not a flight. Details are on the visit page.

There are four signals that a brand has outgrown white label, and you usually need more than one:

• You are reordering the same style repeatedly, rather than testing a range.
• You want a fit that does not exist. You have handled the ranges and none of them do what you need. Not a preference, an actual gap.
• You are consistently above 100 per style, per colour. Below that, cut and sew rarely works out cheaper once sampling and fabric minimums are counted.
• You can afford to have money in production for four months without it affecting the rest of the company.

If that is you, cut and sew is the right next step, and we will tell you so. Most suppliers want you to outgrow them quietly and go elsewhere. We would rather be the one you call.

If you are not there yet, start on stock blanks, find out what sells and scale the winner. Weight is usually the first decision, and what GSM means covers it with the codes we supply. The step by step is in how to start a clothing brand in the UK. When you know what you want to make, get your first drop quoted.