Capsule Collection Manufacturer

What a capsule actually costs you in minimums

This is the number that surprises people, so it goes first. A capsule of three knit styles — say a heavyweight tee, a hoodie and a jogger — is 50 pieces of each, so 150 pieces in total. It is not 50 pieces split three ways. Each style is cut, sewn and inspected separately, which is where the minimum comes from.

Within each style, colours can usually be split: 25 of one colourway and 25 of another inside a 50-piece tee run is normal. Sizes can be split freely. So a 150-piece capsule can still carry six colourways across a full size curve — that is a real collection, not a token one.

Two things change the arithmetic. In peak season the knitwear floor rises to 100 pieces per style. And if one piece of the capsule is woven — an overshirt, a chino, a cap in twill — that style starts at 300 pieces per style, because wovens run through our partner factories on their minimums, not ours. We will tell you that at quoting stage, not after you have planned around it.

Counting back from the date you need stock

The most common planning mistake is working forward from "when can we start" instead of backward from "when do we need it on the shelf". Here is the arithmetic, using our published figures.

Development and sampling take 7–10 days, plus courier time each way and however long your approval takes — that last part is yours and it is usually the most variable. Once the sample is approved and the deposit is confirmed, the order takes 25–35 days from order to shipment, of which 12–15 days is time on the production line for orders up to 2,000 pieces.

Then transit: roughly 3–6 days by express courier, 6–10 days by air freight, or about a month by sea depending on your port. Sea is by far the best unit economics and by far the worst deadline risk.

• Air freight, allowing for one sampling round: budget about 8–10 weeks from first enquiry to stock in hand
• Sea freight, same assumptions: budget about 12–15 weeks
• Add 7–10 days if the capsule needs a custom knit or a dedicated dye run for a specific weight or colour
• Add your own approval time — a sample that sits unapproved for two weeks moves the whole schedule two weeks
• Peak season extends production; we confirm dates at order confirmation rather than at enquiry

Why three styles is cheaper to run than three separate orders

The saving is not a bundle discount, and we are not going to pretend it is one. It is that a capsule shares the overheads a single style would carry alone: one freight consignment instead of three, one set of export documents, one AQL 2.5 inspection across the order, and one sampling round where the fabrics and trims are booked together.

Ordering the same three styles three months apart means paying all of that three times. It also means three chances for a colour to drift, because a matched black across jersey, fleece and terry is something you approve once on a lab dip — not something that reproduces itself across separate orders months apart.

Getting colour to match across three fabrics

A tee, a hoodie and a jogger are three different fabrics, and the same dye recipe lands differently on each. Jersey, brushed fleece and loopback terry take colour at different rates, so "all black" is a specification, not an assumption.

The way to control it is to approve a lab dip per fabric against one Pantone reference before bulk, and to accept that a close commercial match is the realistic target rather than an identical one. If a colour must be exact across all three, say so early — it is a sampling decision, and it is far cheaper to solve before the fabric is booked than after the goods are cut.

What is in a standard capsule

• Heavyweight tee — the anchor style, and the one most likely to reorder first
• Hoodie or crew sweatshirt — the highest perceived value and the biggest decoration area
• Jogger or sweat short — turns two separates into an outfit and lifts basket value
• Woven neck labels, hem tabs and hangtags, identical across all three styles
• One decoration route carried across the capsule — screen printing in-house, embroidery through our partner factory
• Polybagging and retail-ready packaging, specified once and applied to the whole order