Sourcing Materials: Tips for finding high quality materials for sportswear.

The framework

When we talk about the design process, there are few more important elements to consider than fabric choice. Choosing materials that elevate your product and add value for your customer is integral, no more so than in the sportswear industry.?

Sourcing is one of my favourite parts of the process, although it can be painstakingly difficult and frustrating, once you land on the right fabric, it’s incredibly rewarding. Materials and product design go hand in hand. There is no point having a really well designed product if you’re going to supplement it with poor fabric choice; all the hard work loses its value. So, what is it we actually need to source great materials? The first step goes back to what we’re looking to build.?

Product design

When you first design a product or collection, you’ll want to be clear on intended use. You want to know exactly what your product is being designed for. Intended use is one of the pillars we use at Torsa when going through the design process. Depending on your brand, this may be more general, such as a lightweight, breathable running t-shirt. However, through my experience, I would advise to be specific.?

Let’s take a running brand who wants to create a new run short. As a brand, you want to drill down into the specifics of that run short. Ask yourself, who are we designing this for? What are we designing for, i.e. marathons, 10k, trail runners, commuting runners? Why are we designing this, and what is missing in the market? By understanding the fundamentals of its use, you’ll be far better equipped to make decisions on fabric and trim requirements that will add value to the intended use.

Case study: Soar Running

Soar, the British running brand that launched in 2015, has slowly gained a name for itself for thoughtfully designed running apparel which champions the idea of intended use. Aside from fabric, they have been designing functional running garments that really dial into the users pain points and journey as a runner. A great example of this is their?Trail Running Short?which combines a super breathable liner with durable outer shell (in case of snagging on the trails.) This is paired with no chafe seams, zipped pockets and side gel loops, allowing for energy storage on the go. An extra large side split also lends itself to more comfort when tackling steep inclines and declines seen on the trails.?

This example shows that sourcing the correct fabric for its intended use is important, but as is the overall product design as a whole.?There’s no point having an amazing, high quality fabric built for a specific end use, and then a product which doesn’t match up.

Circling back to product design and why it leads fabric choice. You have to understand what the customer needs from a certain product. Let’s take our favourite material?Merino wool. As a fibre, Merino wool is incredible; naturally breathable, impervious to odour, moisture wicking, temperature regulating and sustainable. But not all Merino is the same.

Considering a wool fabric designed for the depths of Winter is going to look different to one intended for a morning Spring run. There are considerations of weight, certain composition, specific yarns needed, hand-feel and so on. Maybe the Winter Merino wool product actually needs to be a lighter fabric because it’s designed to wear under another layer, whilst the Spring wool is meant to be worn on it’s own. We’ll discuss more about fabric choice and collections in another article.

Sourcing

Okay, so you know what product you’re looking to develop. You’ve researched your customer, and drilled down into the products end use. Your design concepts are coming together, and you have a clear picture of what your product is going to look like. It’s time to start sourcing.

The sourcing process is one which requires a process of planning as much as understanding. Obviously your goal is to find the best fabric for the product you’re making, but it’s of course not as simple as that. I’m going to touch on the logistics of product development in another article, but for now, I am going to introduce the aspects you have to consider when sourcing fabric.

Price

When you’re sourcing a fabric, price is of course one of the most important considerations for your style. You first need to understand the total cost of your garment. The main three which are directly related to a garments unit price are the CMT (cut, make and trim), landed fabric cost, and delivery cost into your warehouse.

As a brand, you need to know your target margins for your product and work back from there. Let’s take a very simple example for a direct-to-consumer apparel brand and break it down;

What this examples shows is that you have to have a critical understanding of your business and your product margins. The above is a very simple calculation directly related to product, but as you can see, they all affect the ability to source a fabric.

If you know your retail price, your internal profit margin, and the CMT cost from the factory, you’ll start to get a clear idea of how much you can spend on fabric. Bare in mind, the term consumption is critical here.

What is consumption?

Consumption is simply how many metres are needed to create your garment. Why is this is so important? Well, if we take the above example, if Product A was a run short, the factory may only need 0.5 metres to create one run short. That means, if the pattern allows for it, they could create two run shorts from one metre of fabric, effectively halving the price of the fabric per unit.

However, let’s take Product B which is instead a training trouser in the same material. The fabric usage per unit might be closer to 1.6 metres. Therefore, the calculation would look like this;

Herein lies the importance of consumption and it’s impact on costs, margins and everything in between. As a business, before you start sourcing the fabric, you need to understand your consumption per style.

Having clear measurement specs and detailed tech packs for the factory will go a long way into helping the factory determine accurate fabric consumption per style. Your designer or product developer will likely have previous experience with ‘typical’ consumptions across a range of different styles. Having estimates means you have a rough idea of the price range of fabric you can source, before having to wait for the factory to give you the detailed consumption metrics.

Fabric brief

Through previous experience undergoing product development with Torsa, I would say having a strong fabric brief is a crucial step in sourcing the right fabric in a timely manner. The process of sourcing fabrics is time consuming as is.

Usually you’ll be dealing with local agents that work on behalf of the fabric mill, who then instruct your sample request, which is then sent out to the fabric mill to collate and send to your office. This process may take a couple of weeks, so you can start to see how time-consuming it can get if that first batch of swatches don’t match your requirements. That’s why having an in-depth fabric brief is so crucial.

A strong brief would consider things such as; composition, performance properties, handle/appearance, structure, yarn, weight range, target price, forecasted quantity, lead times, and minimum orders quantity (MOQ’s.)

With an in-depth brief on hand, the fabric mill has the tools necessary to source the fabric which best matches what you’re looking for.

Testing

The importance of data

No, not the data you’re probably used to when running a business. I am referring here to fabric test data. Fabrics should undergo what’s called in-house testing to ensure they are adhering to the standards set by the mill and to ensure the performance properties of the fabric are clearly highlighted for the potential customer. Depending on the material, there are a few key metrics you want to look out for, including;

• Abrasion resistance
• Pilling resistance
• Tensile strength
• Colour fastness
• Shrinkage

You can see an example of a fabric data sheet below;

It’s important to have a designer or developer who understands various data sheets. They often follow a similar format to one another, but there can be differences which can be understood by your designer/developer, or if in doubt, the fabric mill can explain the data to you.

Wear testing

What in-house testing data lacks is real life product usage. Although a good starting point, the insight into your fabrics quality, durability and performance is far and away best discovered in the wear testing phase.

How thorough your wear testing is really depends on your brands resources and structure. Do you have the capital, and time, to build a whole wear test programme? Maybe you’re a start-up and can only afford to try it out yourself or lend your friends some samples to try. Either way, some wear testing is better than no wear testing. Testing out the product for its intended use offers you insight into product performance, how the garment interacts with the body’s movement, durability, and any improvements that can be made.

Where to find materials?

So, with all the specifics out the way, how do you go about sourcing your fabrics? This, of course depends on your industry, but because my experience lies in sportswear, I’ll describe the best routes I’ve found for this industry. Just to note, when starting out, I’d recommend choosing only a select number of fabric mills. Finding mills that can provide multiple fabrics for your collection makes planning and logistics a lot easier.

Trade shows

In my opinion, the best way to source materials is at trade shows. Fabric fairs allow you to meet with mills in person, whether representative of the mills, or agents on behalf (usually both will be there). I talked about the importance of meeting factories face-to-face, and fabric mills are no different. They are a crucial part of the process of building product, and by meeting them, you can start to build an important relationship, which goes much deeper than emails or phone calls.

Trade shows also allow you to view the newest collections from the world’s leading fabric mills in your industry. You can wade through hundreds of fabrics from multiple high-quality fabric mills in search for your perfect fabric. The importance of having a fabric brief and understanding of what you want to create is crucial here. The fabric rep or agent can definitely assist you here, but we’d highly recommend visiting trade shows with your designer or developer, as ultimately they are designing your product, and should know exactly what to look for.

Our favourite shows in Europe are;

Performance Days Munich - 04/05 October

ISPO - Munich Munich - 28/30 November

Première Vision Paris - 4/6 July

If you’re sourcing for your brand, attending these shows is a must. Not only can you source the best fabrics all in one place, you can discover new innovations, attend talks on the future of fabric, and start to build long last relationships with suppliers and potential partners.

From your factory

Another option as a place to source fabrics is your factory. If you have already found your manufacturer within your industry, they will certainly have a network of suppliers to recommend. In fact, a lot of the time they will have what’s called ‘preferred’ suppliers which is usually a list of suppliers they have worked with many times in the past, and have a solid understanding of lead times, minimums, terms, and generally a good experience working with them.

If you’re confident it’s a great factory producing quality garments, you can feel reassured that the suppliers they recommend are the same. Their reputation is on the line when making your garment, with fabric being a key component in the quality and finish of the final garment. With that, they will only recommend mills and suppliers they trust and can rely on.

Use your network

What I have learned building Torsa is that you start to build a solid network of founders and creatives around you that are happy to offer advice when needed. If you’re new to the industry, reaching out to other people who have been through the experience of building a brand is a great way to discover suppliers. If they are in a similar industry, they would most certainly have the contacts with mills and suppliers during their own product development process. Ask them if they would share their favourites, and get a warm introduction to the rep or direct contact at the mill.

The roundup

As you can see, fabric sourcing goes far beyond simply just finding and choosing fabrics. There are a number of considerations you have to bare in mind before the process even begins.

The first step is having a solid understanding of your product margins; what margin are you looking to achieve, and how much you can ultimately spend on fabric per style? This is the first step to ensuring you’re not wasting your time during the sourcing process.

The importance of having a solid brief can’t be overlooked. Having an depth brief which outlines performance properties, weight, composition, hand-feel, and of course price is crucial in a successful sourcing process.

Once you have the fabrics, testing is hugely important. As I mentioned, in-house test data is good, but it’s a long long way from the rigours of wear testing. I can’t stress the importance of wear testing all your garments when you receive your first prototype from the factory. Only then will you truly discover the fabrics performance and durability in a given setting. The last thing you want to do is produce 300 units of a style that customers aren’t happy about because you didn’t properly test the garment beforehand.

As always, thanks for reading and if you want any advice on fabric sourcing and my experience, please email me at [email protected]