The first time you talk to a clothing factory, you will hit a wall of acronyms. The factory rep will ask for your tech pack, quote you an FOB price, mention the MOQ on the fabric, and assume you know what AQL 2.5 means. None of it is explained, because to them it's just how work gets described. To you, it's a foreign language standing between you and your first production run.
This glossary fixes that. It's the working vocabulary of garment manufacturing, not a dictionary you read cover to cover, but a reference you come back to when a term lands in your inbox and you need to know what it actually means for your order, your money, and your timeline.
At Greige, the garment sourcing platform connecting independent fashion brands with vetted Indian factories, we onboard founders who are brilliant at brand, product and audience, and who have never had a reason to learn what "grading" or "FOB" means. The vocabulary isn't hard. It's just never been written down in plain language. So here it is, grouped by where each term shows up in the lifecycle of getting a garment made.
The documents: what you hand the factory
Manufacturing runs on documents, not conversations. Get these right and most other things follow.
Tech pack
A tech pack (technical package) is the specification document for your garment. It contains a flat sketch, a measurement chart (a "spec sheet" or "points of measure"), construction details, stitch types, fabric and trim callouts, colourways, and your label and packaging requirements. It's the single most important document you produce as a brand, because the factory builds exactly what's in it, and exactly nothing that isn't.
A vague tech pack is the single most common reason a sample comes back wrong. If you don't specify the GSM (grams per square metre) of the fabric, the factory picks one. If you don't specify the seam type at the hem, they default to whatever their line runs fastest. Precision in the tech pack is precision in the product.
Bill of Materials (BOM)
The BOM is the itemised list of every component in the garment: main fabric, lining, thread, buttons, zips, labels, hangtags, polybag. It lives inside or alongside the tech pack and is what the factory uses to cost and source the build. When a factory quotes you a price, they're pricing the BOM.
Grading
Grading is the process of scaling your base pattern up and down to create the full size run, XS through XL, or whatever your range is. You design and fit one base size (usually a medium), and grading produces the rest by applying standard increments to each measurement point. Bad grading is why a brand's smalls fit beautifully and the XLs feel boxy.
The pricing terms: what the numbers mean
This is where founders lose the most money to misunderstanding, because two factories can quote "the same" garment using completely different terms.
FOB price
FOB stands for Free On Board. An FOB price is the per-unit cost of your garment loaded onto the ship (or plane) at the port of origin, say, Chennai or Mumbai. It includes the fabric, the labour, the trims and the local transport to the port. It does not include international freight, insurance, import duty or last-mile delivery. That gap between FOB and what the goods actually cost you on your doorstep is where new brands get surprised. We unpack exactly what's in and out of an FOB number in the deeper dive on what FOB price means in clothing.
CMT vs FPP
These are the two models for how a factory prices its work. CMT (Cut, Make, Trim) means you supply the fabric and the factory charges for labour only. FPP (Full Package Production) means the factory sources everything, fabric, trims, packaging, and quotes you one all-in per-unit price.
For almost every brand under a few hundred units per style, FPP is the right model: lower risk, no fabric financing, no minimum-roll headaches. CMT earns its keep at higher volumes when you have a fabric mill relationship worth protecting. The full economics, and the hidden costs that make cheap-looking CMT quotes expensive at small scale, are in CMT vs FPP manufacturing.
MOQ
MOQ is the Minimum Order Quantity, the smallest run a factory (or fabric mill) will accept. It's quoted per style, and often per colourway, which trips people up: a 300-unit MOQ across three colours can mean 100 of each, or 300 of each, depending on the factory. Fabric carries its own MOQ measured in metres or kilos, and that mill minimum is frequently the real constraint, not the factory's stitching minimum. MOQ is the term most likely to kill a first order before it starts, so it gets its own full treatment in the clothing MOQ guide.
Landed cost
Landed cost is the total per-unit cost of your goods once they've cleared customs and arrived at your warehouse: FOB price plus freight, insurance, duty and clearance fees, divided by units. It's the only number that matters for your margins, and it's almost always meaningfully higher than the FOB quote you fell in love with. The full anatomy of where every dollar goes is in the clothing manufacturing cost breakdown.
The process terms: how a garment actually gets made
Sampling
Sampling is the iterative process of building physical prototypes before bulk production. You typically move through a proto sample (first interpretation of the tech pack), a fit sample (correct measurements and fit), and a pre-production or PP sample (final approved version in correct fabric and trims that the bulk run is matched against). Each round costs money and time, and skipping the PP sample to "save time" is how brands end up with a full run that doesn't match what they approved. The full sequence, what each sample proves, and what it should cost is in what sampling is in fashion.
Lead time
Lead time is the elapsed time from confirmed order to goods ready to ship. For a first order from India, plan on a couple of months of production after samples are approved, varying with fabric availability, order complexity and the factory's existing queue. Sampling adds weeks before that. Fabric lead time, how long the mill takes to deliver greige goods and dye them, is usually the biggest swing factor and the one founders forget to ask about.
Greige goods
Greige (pronounced "grey-zh," and yes, it's where we got our name) refers to unfinished, undyed, untreated fabric straight off the loom or knitting machine. It's the raw substrate before dyeing, printing and finishing. Factories often hold greige fabric in stock and dye to order, which is why your colour choice can affect lead time more than your fabric choice does.
GSM
GSM is grams per square metre, the weight, and therefore the density and feel, of a fabric. A lightweight summer tee sits at the low end of the scale and a heavyweight hoodie fleece at the high end. It's the single most useful number for communicating fabric weight to a factory, far more precise than words like "thick" or "premium." Always put a target GSM in your tech pack.
The quality terms: how you protect the order
AQL inspection
AQL stands for Acceptable Quality Limit, the defect threshold you'll accept in a shipment, checked against a statistically valid random sample rather than counting every piece. AQL 2.5 under General Inspection Level II is the industry default for DTC apparel: the inspector pulls a random subset of the order and the shipment passes only if the number of defects stays under the agreed limit. It is one of the highest-ROI steps in the production process and should be non-negotiable on any first order with a new factory. How the levels work, what counts as a critical vs major vs minor defect, and what third-party inspection costs in India are all in the AQL inspection guide.
Defect classification
Defects are sorted into three buckets that determine whether a shipment ships. Critical defects (a safety hazard, a hole in a visible seam, a mislabelled size) stop a shipment at any quality level. Major defects affect function or appearance significantly. Minor defects affect appearance only. You agree the definitions with the factory before production, not after, because "is this loose thread a defect?" is a much harder conversation once the goods are packed.
How the terms connect: a decision walkthrough
Vocabulary is useless in isolation. Here's how these terms chain together in a typical order, so you can see which one matters at which moment.
| Stage | The term that governs it | The decision it forces |
|---|---|---|
| Before you contact a factory | MOQ | Can you afford the minimum run for this style and colourway? |
| First conversation | Tech pack, BOM | Is your spec precise enough to quote against? |
| The quote | FOB, CMT vs FPP | Are you comparing like for like, and which model fits your scale? |
| Budgeting | Landed cost | Does the real per-unit cost still leave you a margin? |
| Before bulk | Sampling (proto → fit → PP) | Does the physical product match the approved sample? |
| Before shipment | AQL inspection | Does the bulk run pass at AQL 2.5? |
The common thread: the terms front-load risk. MOQ, the tech pack and the FPP-vs-CMT choice all get decided before a single garment is sewn, and they determine whether the order is sound. Sampling and AQL are the two checkpoints that catch what the early decisions missed.
If you want help walking a real order through these stages, pressure-testing an MOQ, reading an FOB quote, or setting up inspection, that's exactly what a sourcing call covers.
Where to go deeper
This glossary is the hub. Each of these guides takes one term and goes all the way down:
- What is sampling in fashion, the proto, fit and PP sample sequence and what each one proves.
- AQL inspection in clothing, defect thresholds, inspection levels, and what QC costs in India.
- What FOB price means in clothing, what's included in an FOB quote and what isn't.
- CMT vs FPP manufacturing, the two pricing models and which fits your stage.
And the other pillar guides for the wider picture: how to find a clothing manufacturer, clothing manufacturers in India, minimum order quantity for clothing, and the clothing manufacturing cost breakdown.
FAQ
What is a tech pack in garment manufacturing? A tech pack (technical package) is the specification document a brand hands a factory to get a garment made. It includes a flat sketch, a measurement chart, construction and stitch details, a bill of materials listing every component, colourways, and label and packaging requirements. The factory builds exactly what the tech pack specifies, so a vague tech pack is the most common reason a sample comes back wrong.
What does FOB mean in clothing manufacturing? FOB stands for Free On Board. An FOB price is the per-unit cost of your garment loaded onto the ship or plane at the port of origin, including fabric, labour, trims and local transport to the port. It excludes international freight, insurance, import duty and last-mile delivery, so your true landed cost is always higher than the FOB quote.
What is the difference between CMT and FPP? CMT (Cut, Make, Trim) means you supply the fabric and the factory charges for labour only. FPP (Full Package Production) means the factory sources fabric, trims and packaging and quotes one all-in per-unit price. FPP is lower-risk and usually cheaper in total cost for brands ordering under a few hundred units per style; CMT can win at higher volumes with an established fabric mill relationship.
What does AQL 2.5 mean? AQL 2.5 (Acceptable Quality Limit 2.5) is the industry-default defect threshold for DTC apparel inspection under ISO 2859-1. The inspector pulls a random subset of the order under General Inspection Level II, and the shipment passes only if the number of defects stays under the agreed limit. It checks a statistically valid sample rather than every unit.
What is MOQ in clothing manufacturing? MOQ is the Minimum Order Quantity, the smallest production run a factory or fabric mill will accept. It's set per style and often per colourway, and the fabric mill's minimum (measured in metres or kilos) is frequently the real constraint rather than the factory's stitching minimum. MOQ is the term most likely to block a first order, so it's worth confirming exactly how a quoted minimum is split across sizes and colours.