CMT or Fully Factored? How to Choose the Right Production Route for Your Brand

Why This Decision Trips Up New Brands

Most new brands choose based on price per unit alone. That's understandable, price is usually the first number anyone gives you. But price per unit tells you almost nothing about what you're actually signing up for.

Fully factored production and CMT ask completely different things of you before a single garment gets cut. One expects you to hand over a sketch and a size chart and trust the factory with the rest. The other expects you to arrive with a graded pattern, sourced fabric, and enough production knowledge to troubleshoot a fitting problem over the phone. Choose the wrong one for where your brand actually is, and you'll spend your first season fighting the process instead of building the collection.

What CMT (Cut Make Trim) Actually Means

CMT flips the responsibility. The factory supplies labour, cutting and sewing to your instructions. You supply the graded pattern, the fabric, the linings, and usually the trims. Thread supply varies by factory. Some include it in the labour cost, some don't, and you won't know until you ask.

Here's the bit most people miss: an estimated seventy percent of CMT units don't run pattern development in house. If your factory is one of them, you'll need a freelance pattern cutter or a development studio to get you to sample stage before the factory ever sees your garment. That's an extra relationship to manage, and an extra cost to budget for.

CMT tends to suit smaller runs and gives you far more control over quality and process throughout. It's more commonly UK and EU based, though not always. Some of the largest CMT operations we've come across run out of Lithuania and Latvia, with hundreds of machinists on the floor. Smaller isn't a rule. It's just the more common pattern.

What Both Routes Ask of You, Regardless

Whichever route you choose, some groundwork doesn't change. You'll need a tech pack thorough enough to remove all ambiguity. If you want a French seam and don't say so, a machinist somewhere will make that decision for you, and you won't find out until the sample arrives.

You'll go through more than one sample stage, and the distinction matters more than most people realise. A first sample is usually made from sample-length fabric, close enough for fit and construction, but not the real thing. A pre-production sample has to be made from the actual bulk fabric, because bulk cloth can behave completely differently once it's cut and sewn at scale. Skip that step and you find out about the problem after you've committed to production, not before.

You'll also need to agree payment terms and delivery terms before goods move, not after. Whether the factory works to ex-works or delivered terms changes who's responsible for shipping and when ownership actually transfers. The International Chamber of Commerce's Incoterms rules are the standard reference here, and it's worth knowing which term you're agreeing to, especially the further your supplier is from home.

And regardless of who cuts your fabric, supply your own labels and swing tickets. Almost every growing brand ends up working across more than one factory eventually, even if it doesn't feel that way with your first collection. If each factory sources its own branding, the quality and colour will drift between them. Supply it yourself and your brand stays consistent no matter who's making it.

Do not assume anything. Ask. Every factory, CMT or fully factored, works slightly differently, and the ones we've dealt with rarely volunteer that detail upfront.

This is exactly the kind of decision we help new brands work through before they commit to anything. We've built a checklist from the questions that actually decide it, the ones that matter more than price per unit. Download it here.

The Real Cost of Choosing Blind

Get this decision wrong and the cost isn't abstract. It's thousands of pounds committed to fabric before your first sale. Which is exactly the kind of gap that catches brands out on the cash flow side too. It's sample charges stacking up because nobody asked about surcharges upfront. It's a fourteen-week wait turning into eighteen when a supplier problem hits and you find out, too late, that your factory works ex-works, not delivered. None of this is unusual. It's simply what happens when the decision gets made on unit price alone.

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