A Vital Step from the Start: How to Create Your Activewear Samples with Clothing Manufacturers
Activewear startups are increasing, sensed by Arabella Clothing at MAGIC Las Vegas. Alongside the emergence of fitness and wellness market, there are more players joining in the tide of activewear. However, garment has always been complicated. And when it comes to activewear, details on each piece including fabrics, stitches even the button, can be a challenge if you want to build an iconic brand. Thus, activewear prototyping is a pivotal step for your business career. But if you don't have any experience in developing activewear, how do you start it?
As a professional activewear manufacturer with rich experience working with athletic clothing designing teams, Arabella Clothing would like to share with you a guideline about how to start your activewear samples.
Concept Building: How to Start Building Your Design Idea of Activewear?
First, transfer your activewear concepts onto paper. You need to envision every imaginable garment idea in your mind by using a professional designing tool: tech pack.
A tech pack can integrate all of your requirements for your activewear details. However, there are thousands of templates across the internet and designing companies. But overall, they need you to fill in basic details as following:
- Basic Information: Item Name & No., season, category, gender, sample sizes
- Fabrics: compositions, weight grams and basic functions
- An overview look or sketch of your products (3D mode is highly recommended)
- Constructions & Positions: including zippers, pockets, gusset shapes, stitch types, fits, topstitching, coverstitch..., etc.
- Colors: colorways with Pantone/fabric lap dips of each section
- Measurement: Length, width, height or thickness of your waist (relaxed and stretch), neck, front and back rise, inseam, high hip..., etc.
- Logo & Artwork: Logo sizes, fonts, techniques, sizes, colors or finish
- Labels & Packaging: Main label, size label, care label, hangtag, sticker, bags type, packaging requirements and more details
- Quality requirements: fabric tests you might need like colorfastness to washing or rubbing, shrinkage, stretch or recovery testing.
To help you form a basic logic when you design, here is a formula for you:
Design + Fit + Construction + Logo + Fabric Performance + Quality Test
Reality Visualizing: How Does Activewear Manufacturer Prototype Your Design?
After receiving your tech packs, the clothing manufacturer will start raw material sourcing. Except fabrics, logo materials, stitching yarns, elastics, labels, packages even ornaments if the design includes, they all matter to your first prototype. The sales representative will send fabric swatches, color lab dips, samples of trims, yarns, colorways, labels and more details that might be required at the very first stage to clients to confirm. Until then, the team will start prototyping.
It might be the hardest part for brand building since it relates to your brand's marketing. According to Arabella Clothing's experience, clients might cost over 60% even 80% time and money on developing prototypes. Thus, one suggestion: the more details you confirm in your design, the less you can cost in the prototyping.
For Arabella Clothing, here is a breakdown of how our mocking-up team will handle your samples.
1.Garment Pattern Printing
By confirming correct sizes on our client's tech pack, our patterning group will amplify and adjust it based on their past experience on garment prototyping. Then, printing it as a paper for panel cutting.
2.Pattern Cutting
Cutting patterns manually enable our group to control your prototypes percisely and delicately.We will cut your chosen fabrics into panels based on the pattern papers.
3. Sewing
Panels will move to sewing group.Then start sewing. Arabella clothing has set up several sewing machines to cope with different demand on your stitches, such as overlock, flatlock or colorlock.
There is a vital factor when it comes to sewing: needle sizes of the machine. Sometimes it affects the stitching way, too.
4. Logo Printing
Most of our clients would choose heat-transferred logo on prototypes at the beginning. As one of fastest and cost-effective way to estimate your logo effects, it is highly suggested to activewear brand startups, which is the reason why Arabella clothing introduced this machine to our factory.
However, due to the machine temperature ,it is suggested to take care of your logo designs including fonts, sizes or thickness.
5. Size Measurement
Here comes the finished prototype.
Arabella clothing has prepared different size of wearing models for size measurements in the final stage, to check the size, quality as well as accuracyof the prototyped sample. lt comes with a size chart. Then, our sales department will pack them up and send to our clients to review.
From Demo to Wearable
Building your first activewear collection may seem overwhelming at first. There are fabrics to select, measurements to define, seams to engineer, logos to position, and countless small details that can influence the final garment. A strong tech pack gives your manufacturer a clear starting point. A professional manufacturer who is well-managed prototyping process then turns that blueprint into something you can actually touch, wear, test, and improve. Thus, for an emerging activewear brand, the first prototype is more than just a sample. It is the first physical test of your product concept and your ability to find the right partner. Vice versa, for Arabella Clothing, guiding our brand partners to find their correct direction to build their collection is one of our essential missions.
Hope this guideline can assist you on building your own iconic brands.
Learn more about Arabella Clothing through:
info@arabellaclothing.com
Post time: Aug-12-2026