Clothing Sampling Services for Fashion Brands & Designer
Hook and Eye UK offers comprehensive garment sampling services for startups, growing businesses, and established brands without commitment to bulk manufacture. Our in-house, Birmingham, UK team of trained designers, pattern cutters and garment developers collaborate with our sample seamstresses based in China to transform your 2D designs into tangible 3D samples.
We only offer premium quality fabrics and construction methods to produce high-quality samples. This is achieved by building a solid foundation for each sample, including a tech pack, digital pattern, production sheet, extensive liaison, sample reviews and a final sample report.
Sampling and sample development are a vital part of clothing production. Sampling allows you to experiment with garment silhouette, graphic application, construction details and fit. It also gives you a risk-free way to ensure you’re completely happy with your designs and acts as a sign off for your bulk production items forming a sort of contract for how you would like your mass-produced garments.
Hook and Eye UK is known for attention to detail, fast turnaround times and experienced craftmanship. Our trained team guide brands on sampling decisions to ensure the best results.
Why choose Hook and Eye UK for Garment Sampling?
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Industry Expertise
Garment sampling with Hook and Eye UK is made easy by leaning on our UK-based team of designers, pattern cutters and garment developers along with our international sample seamstresses we ensure your vision is accurately brought to life.
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Flexible, No-Commitment Process
Each stage is paid for separately (including sampling). This allows for sample exploration in a risk-free manor.
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Sustainability
At Hook and Eye UK we value good working conditions, fair pay and eco-friendly sample production. Our comprehensive sampling process minimises the number of samples needed drastically. We aim to get you to a sign-off sample within only 1-2 rounds! This is a more effective eco-friendly way to produce garment samples as it saves fabric wastage, time and cost. For a full list of our sustainable practices on our Bulk Manufacture page here.
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Premium-Quality Craftsmanship
Our teams always ensure samples are created with attention to detail allowing brands to make informed choices on fabric, graphic application, fit, garment construction methods, trims and overall finishes.
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In-House Fabric Library
We have an extensive in-house fabric library with hundreds of fabrics (complete with colour options) for you to see and feel so you can make informed selections. We also have a variety of samples made in various fabric choices to help with fabric decision making.
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Collaboration-Driven Approach
Our team works closely with each brand to understand their needs and offer personalised guidance throughout the sampling and development process.
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Inclusive Sample Review & Development
Each sample constructed goes through several review stages and has a final review stage to check sampling is in line with specified tech packs. Any issues found are reported with our construction team and solutions are discussed.
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Free Sample Development and Tech pack updates
You will receive a full guide of ‘next steps’ with your samples. Once you have tried and tested your samples you will be offered a free development session with our trained garment developers. This session is to discuss any sampling tweaks, update tech packs and move forwards either with your next stage of sampling or bulk production.
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Wide Range of Graphic Application Techniques
We offer a wide range of fabric print and graphic application techniques including puff print, screen print, DTG print, DTF print, embroidery, patches, woven labels, raised silicon seal print, rubber badges, all over reactive fabric print, all over sublimation fabric print and much more.
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Convenient Turnaround Times
Typically, our sampling lead times are between 4-8 weeks allowing brands to keep their development schedule on track.
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Support for Startups & Independent Brands
We specialise in helping small businesses and emerging designers navigate the complexities of garment development.
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Adaptable Services
We help all levels of understanding. All we need to start is a sketch, mock-up or reference imagery, our initial contact support will help advise you from there.
Types of Garment Sampling We Offer
As explained in our sustainability section above we aim to get your samples to ‘sign-off’ stage in just 1-2 rounds of separate sampling. Once you’re happy with your samples we will then offer free Pre-Production (PP) samples with commitment to bulk manufacture. PP samples are intended to sign off any final tweaks before moving into bulk production.
There are two main ways to efficiently get to the perfect fitting sample:
1. Utilise Hook and Eye UK’s Pre-developed Garments Collection
You can of course have completely custom shapes but the quickest, easiest and cheapest way to design is to pick from our pre-developed shapes. These are not stock items, they are just perfected shapes for you to use as your base fit. You can choose your any fabric selection and colour as well as add graphics and even alter shapes.
All these shapes are inspired and developed from popular bridge brand silhouettes like Palm Angels, Represent, Ralph Lauren, Gucci, Fear of God with a sprinkle of H&E magic which makes them a great place to start!
I’ll attach the boards below :)
Using these shapes dramatically reduces your pattern cutting costs as the patterns are already done (and we give you free access to them when you sample with us).
Click here to see our collection of pre-developed garments!
2. Custom Fit from
Existing Sample Adaptations
The simplest way avoid endless rounds of sampling is
to create a custom fit by simply adapting the shape from an existing garment.
Our pattern cutters can easily modify an existing fit from a garment that you
already love the shape of. This produces great results and removes the guess
work.
FAQs
Q. Do you do samples without commitment to bulk manufacture?
A. Yes. Each stage is priced separately to give you the freedom to move as and when you like.
Q. Can you take a fit from an existing sample?
A. Yes, we can!
Q. How long does it take to get samples?
A. Typically samples take around 4-8 weeks from payment and receipt of sample references (if you are sending any for fit reference).
Q. I’ve never done garment sampling before—what’s the
point? Can’t I just go straight to production?
A. Your sample acts as a kind of sign-off or contract between you and your manufacture for what you (the brand) are approving for your bulk manufacture. If you commit to bulk garment manufacture without seeing and approving a sample, you have very little rights to contest anything you’re not happy with (even if you have a tech pack as so many points can be interpreted in different ways).
Q. Why are your samples not free with bulk production?
A. Some clothing manufacture companies offer your first sample ‘free’ with commitment to bulk production. We also offer this but never for your first round of sampling. It’s important to us that we give you freedom to check that you’re happy with our quality level and services before committing to bulk production.
Q. How much does garment sampling cost?
A. It totally depends on the complexity of each sample and the number of samples you’re having. At Hook and Eye UK we apply discount for numerous samples of the same design in different colourways for example. Once you have created a full tech pack and all your requirements are outlined we can provide full sample and bulk production costing along with estimated shipping costs. If you’d like an idea of sampling costs contact us and ask for our Estimated Pricing Guide where you can see average costing for our most popular items, read more about sample costing here.
Q. Is garment sampling expensive?
A. Sample costing links directly to the amount of work required within your sample construction and graphic application complexity along with fabric and trim quality. A simple t-shirt with one graphic is always going to be less work (and less expensive) then a cargo trouser with several pockets and multiple graphics for example.
Another cost factor to think of is the level of service given. At Hook and Eye UK we specialise in developing your items for you, our garment unit cost is inclusive of paying our team UK wage rates for sample development, tech pack updates, sample reports & reviews, customer sample development sessions, production construction guides, QC guideline checks etc. Essentially when you go directly to a bulk manufacturer you do all these things yourself and deal with all issues and act as your own developer. Our company is integrated with our China manufacture team and the UK side specialises in all doing all of that for you to provide premium quality levels and save you money on costly mistakes in the long run.
Q. I already have a sample but need some tweaks—can you refine it?
A. Yes, no problem! You’ll go through any tweaks that need to be made in your tech pack and design session with our designer and these will be actioned by our talented garment developers once you commit to sampling.