Tech packs get talked about as an apparel artefact because apparel is the industry that named them and formalised them first. That framing is a historical accident, and it costs people money: a founder launching a pet bed, a homeware line or a moulded accessory reads that tech packs are "for fashion", sends the factory a photo and a paragraph, and discovers the rest of the specification at the sample stage.
If you are new to the document itself, start with what a tech pack is. This page assumes you know, and covers what shifts when the product is not a garment.
What is constant everywhere
These nine sections appear in every category. If a pack is missing one of them, it is missing it in every industry, not just yours.
| Section | Why it survives every category |
|---|---|
| Cover and revision | Two versions in circulation is the same disaster whatever the product is. |
| Drawing | Something has to be dimensioned, and prose cannot be. |
| Dimensional table | Every made thing has sizes and every size needs a tolerance. |
| Bill of materials | Anything bought separately has to be costed and sourced separately. |
| Construction / assembly | How the parts become one object is never obvious from the drawing alone. |
| Colour standards | Colour is a material property, not a screen value, in every industry. |
| Labelling and branding | Placement and attachment are production decisions, not design ones. |
| Packaging | How it ships decides whether it arrives saleable. |
| Compliance | Every category has a market that will stop it at the border. |
Apparel and knitwear
The reference case, and the most section-heavy of the sewn categories. The distinguishing work is grading — every point of measure needs a value at every size, with per-measurement increments — and fit intent, because a garment can be dimensionally correct and still wrong on a body.
- Points of measure with a stated method, graded across the full size range.
- Fabric by fibre content, weight, construction and finish; knits also need gauge and stretch recovery, because a spec measured on a fabric with different recovery will not hold.
- Seam and stitch classes, topstitch distances, edge finishes, reinforcement at stress points.
- Care and fibre content labelling, which is a legal requirement in most markets rather than a branding decision.
Plush and soft toys
Soft toys look like the easiest sewn category and are among the most exacting, because most of them are children's products and children's products are regulated.
- Fill type and fill weight. Stated in grams, not "firm" — firmness is the result, weight is the specification. Under-filling is the single most common plush production fault and it is invisible on a photo.
- Pile direction. Plush fabrics have a nap. Cut two panels with the pile running opposite ways and they read as two different colours under the same light.
- Facial features and attachment. Embroidered versus applied is not only an aesthetic choice — for younger age grades, applied components are typically restricted or excluded, and embroidery becomes the answer.
- Seam strength and pull testing. Limbs, ears, tails and any attached component are the tested points, and the tech pack is where the requirement is stated.
- Age grading and safety testing. Toy safety regimes such as ASTM F963 in the United States and the EN 71 series in Europe apply by market and by age grade, with additional obligations under legislation such as the CPSIA for children's products in the US. Which apply to your product is a question for your test lab or compliance advisor, not something to infer from a template.
Weighted and beanbag plush add a section most templates lack: the pellet or bead material, its weight, and how it is contained. A pellet pouch that is specified as an internal sealed sack behaves very differently in a drop test from pellets loose in the body cavity.
Pet products
Pet is where a garment-shaped template misleads most, because the wear case is destructive by design. A pet bed or toy is not worn, it is chewed, dragged, washed and sat on by an animal that does not read care labels.
- Durability requirement stated as an outcome — chew resistance, tear strength, seam burst — rather than as a fabric preference.
- Reinforcement at every seam that takes load, usually doubled or bar-tacked, called out explicitly on the flat.
- Size by animal, not by person. The dimensional table needs the intended weight or breed range beside it, or the sizes are numbers with no referent.
- Fill certification and washability, including whether the cover is removable and what the closure is, since a non-removable cover on a pet bed is a returns problem.
- Small-parts and material safety, which for chew toys is closer to a toy regime than a homeware one.
Headwear
Structured headwear is a construction-led category: the shape is built, not draped, and the pack has to describe the build.
- Crown panel count and profile — five-panel, six-panel, structured or unstructured, and the crown height, which is what actually decides the silhouette.
- Buckram or fusing in the front panels, or its explicit absence.
- Sweatband material, width and stitch, and whether it is taped.
- Closure — snapback, strap and slide, elastic, fitted — with hardware finish.
- Decoration as embroidery stitch count and thread colours, or as applied patch with dimensions and attachment. Stitch count drives cost directly, so leaving it out leaves the quote open.
Bags, backpacks and accessories
Hardware is the difference here. A bag is a sewn product carrying a set of bought metal components, and the metal is where both the cost and the failures live.
- Hardware schedule — every buckle, slider, D-ring, rivet and zip pull, by size, material, finish and plating. Plating is a durability spec, not a colour.
- Webbing and strapping by width, weight and material.
- Load-bearing points and what happens at them: bar tacks, box stitches, reinforcement patches.
- Edge finishing — bound, folded, painted — and lining construction.
- Volume stated alongside dimensions, because a bag is sold on capacity and capacity is not derivable from three external measurements.
Footwear
Footwear is its own discipline and the most template-resistant of the sewn categories, because the governing object is not in the pack at all.
- Last — the form the shoe is built on. Specified by reference, and the single most important line in the document.
- Construction method — cemented, vulcanised, stitched — which decides tooling, cost and repairability.
- Upper, lining, insole, midsole and outsole, each with material and thickness.
- Size run and regional scale, since a size chart is meaningless without saying which scale it is in.
- Outsole tooling, which is usually a separate mould with its own lead time and cost.
Home textiles and soft furnishings
Cushions, throws, bedding, table linen. Dimensionally simple, materially fussy.
- Finished dimensions after washing, with shrinkage allowance stated, because the customer measures the product after the first wash and the factory measures it before.
- Fabric weight and thread count, and pattern repeat where there is a print, since repeat drives consumption and therefore cost.
- Fill for cushions and duvets, by type and weight, plus the inner construction.
- Closures — zip, envelope, tie — with concealed placement dimensions.
- Flammability and fill labelling, which is regulated for furnishings in a number of markets and is one of the easiest requirements to miss coming from an apparel background.
Hardgoods and moulded products
The furthest from the apparel template, and the place where the word "tech pack" is sometimes replaced by "product specification" or "manufacturing drawing pack". The document does the same job.
- Dimensioned engineering drawings with per-feature tolerances, replacing the graded points-of-measure table.
- Material and grade, plus finish — texture, gloss level, coating — specified against a standard rather than described.
- Tooling and mould notes: cavity count, draft angles, parting line and gate location, because where the gate sits is visible on the finished part forever.
- Assembly sequence and fastener schedule where the product has more than one part.
- Wall thickness and structural requirements, which are what a moulder will otherwise decide on their own for moulding convenience.
- Applicable product safety and materials compliance for the markets you sell into.
Working across categories
Most brands do not stay in one category. A toy brand adds apparel; an apparel brand adds bags; a pet brand adds a plush line. That is the point at which a template stops being a help, because the template you have is shaped like the category you started in — and the sections it lacks are invisible. You do not notice the missing pile-direction row until the sample comes back two-tone.
Two practical consequences:
- Keep the invariant core identical across categories. Same cover, same revision convention, same colour standard convention, same packaging section. A factory that receives your packs repeatedly learns where to look, and that is worth real time on every order.
- Let the specification sections be category-specific. Do not force fill weight into a field called "fabric weight" because that is what the template had. A field used for the wrong thing is worse than an absent one, because it will be read as the thing it is named.
This is the problem DreamPack Studio was built around: you describe the product, and the pack that comes back carries the sections that product actually needs — the flat, the measurements, the materials, the labels and the safety copy — rather than the sections a garment template happened to have. It works across categories, and the list keeps growing.
Common questions
Are tech packs only used in fashion?
No. Fashion named the document, but any product a factory builds to a specification uses the same artefact — plush, pet, headwear, bags, footwear, home textiles, hardgoods. The core sections are identical; only the specification detail changes.
What is a tech pack for a plush toy?
The same core as any other — flats, dimensions, materials, construction, labelling — plus fill type and weight, pile direction, seam strength at stress points, how facial features attach, and the toy safety testing that applies in your markets.
Do hardgoods use tech packs?
Yes, though it is sometimes called a product specification or a drawing pack. It leans on dimensioned drawings, tooling notes and assembly sequence where a sewn pack leans on grading and seams. The purpose is unchanged.
Does the same tech pack format work across categories?
The structure does; the fields do not. A garment template pointed at a moulded product will have empty rows and missing ones — and the missing ones are the expensive half.