Contents
If you're a designer looking to bring your vision to life, a tech pack (also known as a specification sheet) is your best friend. Think of it as a detailed blueprint that bridges the gap between your design ideas and the manufacturer’s production process. It includes everything from flat sketches and construction details to fabric specifications, measurements, and costing—essentially, all the technical details needed to ensure your design is made exactly as you envisioned.
A well-structured tech pack minimizes errors, reduces miscommunication, and speeds up the sampling process, making production smoother and more efficient. In this post, we’ll guide you through the step-by-step process of creating a shorts tech pack—and the best part? We’re giving you a FREE downloadable template at the end so you can customize it for your own designs. Let’s get started!
Size and units of measurement
To start developing a tech pack, we will set up the size and units of measurement. Our shorts here will be available in S, M and L (small, medium and large) sizes, and we will set up inches as the units of measurement.
Sketches and construction details
A good tech pack begins with technical sketches—these are what bring your design to life for the factory. Unlike fashion illustrations, technical sketches focus on proportions, construction details, and multiple angles, ensuring manufacturers understand exactly how your design should be produced.
Typically, these sketches are created in black and white using graphic design tools, but for this tutorial, we’ll repurpose this template from Repsketch. The best part? You can customize the design, change colors, and even preview how your shorts will look in real life!
Excited to try it out? Sign up for the Repsketch now!
We will include multiple views. The front view:
The back view:
Saral Kochar
Learn how to create a professional tech pack with up-to-date tools.
A Bill of Materials
A Bill of Materials (or BOM table) is a complete list of materials required to produce a specific product. Its main purpose is to help companies estimate material costs to plan purchases and reduce waste.
Our Bill of Materials for shorts includes fabric, trims, labels and packaging materials.
Measurements
A spec sheet or a measurement table is part of a tech pack where a designer communicates technical guidelines and requirements to the manufacturer on how to construct the product.
A Measurement Table consists of technical sketches with callouts and corresponding measurements.
A tech pack for shorts will include the following measurements:
- 1/2 Waist;
- Front Rise;
- 1/2 Hips;
- Front pocket opening;
- Front pocket length;
- Front pocket width;
- Back rise;
- Leg opening;
- Inseam;
- Total length of garment;
- Back pocket length;
- Back pocket width
Costing Sheet
Costing Sheets assist brands with keeping track of expenses and planning future orders. A typical Costing Sheet consists of all materials that go into a BOM table with the corresponding prices.
For this tutorial, we include costs of materials and packaging. In addition, you can add shipping expenses and expected profit to it.
Share with the manufacturer
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.
The sample-making process begins once you share the tech pack with your manufacturer and sign the manufacturing agreement. The tech pack may be updated several times during this procedure until you are pleased with the final product. It's critical to maintain each tech pack version on hand and compare them as needed.
On Techpacker, the system will highlight any modifications, making them more visible and accessible to the manufacturer.
