Your own apparel from China

A print on a wholesale blank stops being enough once you want a particular fabric weight, an exact colour, a woven neck label or packaging you can sell from. Then the garment itself has to be made to your specification. We have that done directly by a producer in China from 300 pieces per article, and our own team checks it during production and before shipment. Decoration methods, labelling and a calculated landed-cost example are on the merch and textile customisation page.

DS Trading has two founders: Ben Detert in Hamburg and Felix Sander, who works in China with a whole team. The team knows more than 100 producers personally, among them workshops that do printing, embroidery and washes in house and a factory that specialises in caps. Our team checks directly at the producer whether an embroiderer can stitch a 3D logo cleanly.

For many brands and creators, production in China is a black box: who embroiders, who sews, and why is the sample suddenly a week late? With us, one European contact takes you through the whole project and makes it happen, from the first mockup until the cartons are with you. We get in touch on our own, say openly when something shifts and plan dates that are realistic. With merch for a drop or an event in particular, we do everything we can to keep them. If something is wrong with a delivery, we talk to you straight away and come to see you, because merch only works if you can trust us.

Your merch usually costs less with us than with your own sourcing or another sourcing agency. We handle both halves of the route ourselves, production in China and import into Germany, compare the options on each side and take the cheaper one. With the producer we negotiate the best possible price, for decoration and labels as well. Your merch arrives DDP, invoiced from Germany.

This route is for your own label on your own specification. It runs from a tech pack, a reference garment or a sketch to a physical sample you approve, with checks by our own team on site and reorders measured against that same reference. If your specification is finished and you mainly need a producer to plan series and repeat runs with, read the brand supplier page; the private label page covers specification and product development.

Polos, softshells, trousers, jackets and shirts in your company colour, set up as a repeat programme so that measurements, colour and finish match from batch to batch. The colour is tied to an approved physical reference, and our own team checks against it during production and before shipment. This route covers uncertified garments only and excludes category II and III personal protective equipment. The workwear and corporate fashion page lists the articles and explains how reorders work.

Most merch enquiries revolve around a few articles: T-shirts, hoodies and caps, followed by polos, longsleeves, zip hoodies, jerseys and drawstring bags. For each of them our network has producers with their own focus, for example a factory that only makes caps and does embroidery and washes, or a producer that fully sublimates polyester jerseys.

Which decoration fits depends on fabric and artwork. Screen printing pays off for designs with few colours and, with puff ink, gives a raised effect. Digital printing puts photos and gradients onto cotton. Full sublimation dyes polyester all the way through, which is why it is used for sports jerseys. Caps usually get flat or 3D embroidery, hoodies an embroidered chest or back, and lettering on a sleeve is often a heat transfer.

In a merch set, the same colour turns out differently on sweat fleece than on T-shirt jersey, because the fabrics take up dye differently. If you order a set, it pays to sample the hoodie and the shirt together so you can see both colours side by side.

There is a sample before every merch series. You pay for it and for its shipping, and you know the amount before we order it. Printing or embroidering the series only begins after you have approved that sample in writing.

Whether merch looks like a brand often comes down to detail: a woven neck label instead of the blank maker’s label, a tear-away label for resale, a hangtag with your logo. Woven labels need their own plate, which the producer sets up once. Many producers do not include care labels and hangtags in their unit price, so we put them into the costing from the start.

Packaging ranges from one polybag per piece through multipacks to bulk bags of ten. Many producers pack caps several to a bag by default. If every cap should be packed on its own, we settle that before the quote, because not every workshop offers it.

The care label has to show fibre composition and care instructions, otherwise the goods can get stuck at customs. You decide what goes on it for your brand; we put it into production and tell you if something seems to be missing.

On a first order a lot of time goes into sampling and alignment. On the second, the reference already exists: the sample you approved for the first order remains the yardstick, and our team checks the new run against it. That keeps colour, artwork size and fit the same from batch to batch.

If you change the artwork, fabric or colour between two orders, a new sample is needed. With embroidery a new embroidery plate usually comes on top, charged once. A different size split or an extra colour of the same article we discuss before ordering, so it is clear whether it needs a new sample.

For merch that comes back every season or for every tour, we plan the order date backwards from the date you need the goods. Production takes three days to four weeks depending on the article; from finished production to Germany, air freight needs about 15 days and sea freight 50 to 65 days.