The Hoodie Tech Pack: Every Field That Changes Your Sample

Points of measure: the eight that decide the fit

Every measurement should be given for one base size, flat, in centimetres or inches consistently, with a tolerance. These are the ones that actually determine whether the hoodie looks like your reference.

• Chest width, measured 2.5 cm below the armhole — the number that sets the silhouette
• Body length from high point of shoulder, which is what makes a hoodie cropped, regular or long
• Shoulder width, or a note that the style is drop-shoulder and where the seam falls
• Sleeve length from centre back neck, and separately the bicep and cuff opening
• Hood height and hood width, measured flat — the most commonly omitted pair on any hoodie pack
• Pocket width, height, and its distance from the hem
• Rib depth at cuff and hem, stated separately because they are frequently different
• Neck drop and neck width, which govern how the hood sits when it is down

Fabric and rib: two callouts, not one

State the body fabric as weight plus construction plus composition — "380 GSM brushed loopback fleece, 80% cotton / 20% polyester" — rather than "heavyweight fleece". The first is buildable. The second is an invitation for the factory to guess, and the guess will be whatever they have in stock.

Then specify the rib separately. Cuffs and waistband are a different fabric from the body and the spec is different: 2x2 or 1x1, its weight, its composition, and crucially its elastane content. Rib with no elastane relaxes after a few wears and the cuffs go slack — which is the single most common complaint about a first hoodie order, and it traces back to a tech pack that said "matching rib" and nothing else.

If you want the rib dyed to match the body exactly, say so. Body fabric and rib are dyed in separate lots and a close match is not the same as an exact one; on a garment-dyed program they will match because they are dyed together, but on a piece-dyed program they need a stated tolerance.

Hood, cord and hardware

Say whether the hood is two-panel or three-panel. A three-panel hood has a centre gusset, sits rounder on the head and costs slightly more; a two-panel hood is flatter and more common. Both are correct — but only one is what you drew.

Say whether the hood is lined, self-lined, or single-layer, because it changes the hand-feel and the price. Then specify the drawcord: flat or round, its width, its composition, its length beyond the eyelet, and the tipping — metal, plastic or knotted. And specify the eyelets: metal or stitched, and their colour and finish if metal.

On a zip hoodie, name the zip. Coil or moulded tooth, its size, whether it is open-ended, the puller shape, and the tape colour. "Zip" on a tech pack is not a specification; it is a category.

Decoration: placement measured, not described

Give every print or embroidery placement as a measurement from a fixed point — normally centimetres down from the high point of shoulder and centred, or offset by a stated distance. "Centre chest" is read differently by different people and the difference is visible on the finished garment.

State the artwork size in millimetres, the method, and the colours as Pantone references. For embroidery, supply the artwork at the size it will be stitched, because designs that read well at 200 mm frequently turn to mud at 60 mm and the factory cannot fix that at the digitising stage.

Where a print crosses a seam or lands on the pocket, flag it explicitly. It is producible, it is harder, and it needs to be priced as such rather than discovered on the line.

If you do not have a tech pack and would rather not build one from scratch, our development team writes them from a sketch or a reference garment — that is our product development service.

The five omissions that cause most first-sample failures

From the packs we receive, these are the blanks that generate a wrong sample and a lost fortnight far more often than anything else.

• No hood measurements at all, so the hood is built to the factory block rather than yours
• Rib specified as "matching" with no composition or elastane content
• No tolerance given, so a garment 2 cm out is neither clearly right nor clearly wrong
• Measurements taken on a worn reference garment that has already shrunk, then quoted as target finished dimensions
• No statement of whether measurements are before or after wash on a washed program — the two differ by several centimetres