How To Create a Tech pack for Footwear Products

Fashion brands use tech packs to communicate design details to manufacturers. Apart from that, a tech pack is a collaborative environment for designers, product developers, buyers, and quality control planners. It is a great tool for product development tracking and quality control checks.

A standard tech pack consists of sketches (also called fashion flats), construction details, measurements, a Bill of Materials, and a costing sheet. In this blog post, we will show you how to create a tech pack for a pair of shoes.

The size range and sample size

To set up your tech pack, add the size range and your desired sample size for the shoes. Your manufacturer will produce the first sample based on your sample size measurements. Once the sample size is approved, the factory will produce a size set that will include samples for all sizes that are requested in your tech pack.

*Setting a size range and a sample size*

Sketches and construction details

Fashion flats or technical sketches are the starting point of every tech pack. They show what a pair of shoes have to look like when manufactured. Your fashion flats have to illustrate every design detail from different angles. For the shoe tech pack, we suggest including a side view, top view, and bottom view of the sole. Based on your sketches, the pattern maker will develop a pattern for the sample size pair.

*Adding Pantone color numbers to the tech pack*

Technical sketches are usually done in black and white using Adobe Illustrator. But if you are creating a pair in different color variations, you can also include colored sketches along with the corresponding Pantone color numbers.

Learn how to create a professional tech pack with up-to-date tools.

A Bill of Materials

A Bill of Materials (or BOM) is a complete list of all the items that are required to build a product. A BOM is a great tool to estimate material costs and reduce waste. It also helps to never miss a single detail when manufacturing your shoes.

Shoes are complex products. In order to keep their shape and securely support a foot, they consist of many parts. From outer materials like leather, heels, and soles to inner materials like steel shanks, shoemaking nails, and reinforcement glue.

Make sure to also add your supplier’s info to the BOM table. It will save you a lot of time when it’s time to re-order materials.

Measurements

The measurement specification sheet is one of the most important documents used to produce a garment. Basically, it is an elaborate detailing of the measurements of different components in a particular garment.

The measurements spec sheet for shoes consists of technical sketches with callouts and a measurements table. Arrow callouts (also called annotations) showcase how the measurements are taken to the manufacturer.

Tech pack Point of measurements — Point of measurements

Based on the measurements table, a pattern maker will make a pattern for the product. A tech pack for shoes should include the following measurements:

Full height of shoes;
Heel height;
Sole length;
Shoes width;
Shoe opening length;
Sole height.

Depending on the style, a measurements table may include other measurements like side panel length, heel-to-side panel, toe to side panel, etc.

Costing Sheet

Costing Sheets help brands calculate the cost of a product. It helps with budget planning. Once you receive a quote from your factory, you will know how much it would cost to produce one pair of shoes and the whole production run. Generally, the more shoes you produce, the lower the cost per pair will be.

The costing sheet for shoes will include:

Labor cost;
Materials costs, like leather, soles, steel shanks, etc. (basically everything from your BOM table);
Labels and tags;
Packaging materials.

The costing sheet will calculate the cost of one pair of shoes. Based on that, you will be able to plan your budget and decide how many pairs you would like to produce.

Once you have your tech pack ready, you can generate a PDF doc in one click and share the factory-ready tech pack with your manufacturer.

Finalized shoes tech pack that is ready to shared with the factory — Finalized shoe tech pack that is ready to share with the factory

Once you share the tech pack with your manufacturer and sign the manufacturing agreement with them, the sample-making process begins. During this process, the tech pack may be edited many times until you are satisfied with the final result. So it is important to keep each tech pack version on hand and compare them as needed.