Private label, white label and OEM clothing — what is the difference?

A white-label garment is one the factory already makes — its own blank, its own pattern, its own fabric — sold to you with your label sewn in and, optionally, your print on it. You choose from the factory's range; you do not change the garment. Many brands' first product is white label: a good heavyweight blank with a woven neck label and a chest print.

What you control: the label, the decoration, the colour from the factory's stock range, the packaging. What you do not: the fit, the fabric, the construction. What it costs: the blank price plus label and decoration — the lowest entry point, from 50 pieces.

Private label means the garment is made for your brand to your specification — your fit, your fabric weight, your colour, your trims — and sold only under your label. The factory's name appears nowhere. This is what most people mean when they say they want to 'start a clothing brand': a product that is theirs, not a decorated version of someone else's.

In practice private label sits on a spectrum. At one end, a factory blank with your label and your own fit adjustments — a small step from white label. Further along, a colour of your own, which is a 300-piece dye lot. At the other end, a fully cut-and-sew garment from your tech pack. We offer the whole range from 50 pieces, with 30 per stock colour.

What you control: everything the tech pack specifies. What it costs: more than white label, because the garment is made for you — a custom colour is a 300-piece dye lot with a lab dip, quoted against the stock-colour price; a custom fit adds pattern development and a sample; a custom fabric adds sourcing and a fabric minimum.

OEM — original equipment manufacturer — is the term the wider manufacturing world uses for a factory that produces a product to a customer's complete specification, to be sold under the customer's brand. In clothing it overlaps almost entirely with full private label: you provide the tech pack, the factory makes the garment. The term is more common in export contracts and with larger buyers; 'private label' is more common with brands and startups. From our floor, they are the same service.

A related term, ODM — original design manufacturer — describes a factory that designs the garment and offers it for you to brand, which is closer to white label with more design input.

If you are launching and testing: white label. Our heavyweight blank, your woven label, your print. It is a real product from a real factory for around $12–17 per tee at 50 pieces, and nobody buying it will know or care that the blank was ours.

If you have sold a first run and want the garment to be yours: private label. Start with a custom fit — a longer body, a boxier cut — then a colour of your own once a style is selling in dye-lot quantity. Each step is a small increase in cost for a large increase in ownership.

If you have a designer, a tech pack and a range: OEM. Send the pack; we make the garments. This is the service our export customers in the US, UK and Gulf use, and it is where the 50-piece minimum matters most — most factories offering true OEM start at 300.

Your neck label, care label and hangtag if you want them. Individual polybagging. A pre-production sample before bulk. No factory branding anywhere on the garment or the packaging. The right to reorder the same specification indefinitely — your pattern and your artwork stay on file.

Private label and OEM production runs in our own unit in Lahore — we cut, sew, dye, print and finish the garments ourselves. Minimum 50 pieces per style; 10–14 working days for cut-and-sew; worldwide shipping.