Garment & Apparel
Apparel breaks generic inventory tools in a specific way. One style becomes thirty SKUs the moment you add sizes and colourways, fabric is bought by the metre and consumed by the garment, and the cost per unit moves every time a mill quote changes. Stocksmith tracks all three levels at once: fabric and trims, cut work in progress, and finished garments by size.
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| Item | On hand | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Oversized Tee, Natural · M | 186 | In stock |
| Linen Shirt, Sand · L | 94 | In stock |
| Cropped Hoodie, Charcoal · S | 22 | Low |
| Cotton jersey, 240gsm | 312 m | In stock |
Garment manufacturing software tracks the materials that go into a garment, the production runs that turn them into finished stock, and the cost that follows the garment through to the sale. It is not the same thing as a retail inventory app, which starts at the point where you already have a finished unit on a shelf.
The difference matters because most of an apparel brand's money is tied up before a finished garment exists. Fabric sitting on rolls, trims on order, panels cut but not yet sewn, and a contract sewer holding three weeks of work in progress are all inventory. A tool that only counts finished units cannot tell you what any of that is worth, and it certainly cannot tell you what a tee costs to make.
Stocksmith works from a bill of materials per style. Record a cutting run and the fabric, trims and labels come off stock in the right quantities; the finished garments go on, split by size. The cost rolls up as it goes, so the number on the product is the number you paid, not a figure you set once in 2024.
Fabric, trims and the size matrix
A tee in five sizes and three colourways is fifteen sellable variations drawing on the same jersey and the same trims. Track them as fifteen unrelated products and you lose the thing you actually need to know, which is how much fabric is left and how many more garments it will make.
Stocksmith keeps fabric as a material in its own unit. Buy jersey in metres, consume it in metres, and let the variations sit above it as products built from the same pool. Trims, labels, zips and packaging behave the same way: bought by the piece, consumed per garment, counted down as you produce.
Reorder points sit on the materials, not just the finished goods. That is the level where a shortage actually stops production, and it is the one a finished-goods count will never warn you about.
| Item | On hand | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Oversized Tee, Natural · M | 186 | In stock |
| Linen Shirt, Sand · L | 94 | In stock |
| Cropped Hoodie, Charcoal · S | 22 | Low |
| Cotton jersey, 240gsm | 312 m | In stock |
Cost per garment
Most apparel pricing advice tells you to check what comparable brands charge and land somewhere near it. That is backwards. If you have not costed the style properly, including the fabric you wasted in the cut, the trims, the labels and the mailer, you are guessing, and the guess gets baked into a wholesale price sheet you then have to live with for a season.
A bill of materials in Stocksmith goes as many levels deep as the garment does. A cut-and-sewn body can be a component in its own right, with the fabric, rib trim and thread underneath it, and the finished style built on top with labels and packaging. Costs roll up through every level automatically.
Material costs are weighted averages of what you actually paid, so when a fabric price moves, your cost of goods moves with it rather than waiting for you to remember.
Cutting runs and production
Whether you sew in house or send bundles to a contract sewer, the mechanics are the same. You commit fabric and trims to a run, the run produces a quantity of finished garments across a size break, and both sides of that need to land in your stock figures on the same day.
In Stocksmith that is one action. Enter the run, and materials deduct through the bill of materials while finished garments are added by variation. Nothing needs reconciling afterwards, and the work-in-progress question stops being a mental note.
Production deadlines and expected arrival dates on incoming fabric are tracked alongside, so a mill delay shows up as a scheduling problem while you can still act on it.
Dye lots and fabric rolls
Dye lots are the apparel version of a batch problem. Two rolls of the same fabric from the same mill can sit a shade apart, and the customer who ordered two of the same shirt is the one who will notice. When a roll turns out to be faulty, the question is always which garments came off it and where those garments went.
Stocksmith holds lot numbers on received materials and carries them through the cutting run into finished stock and out to orders. That gives you the chain in both directions: from a roll forward to the customers, and from a returned garment back to the roll.
Material lot tracking is available on the Indie plan and above.
Wholesale and direct
Apparel brands almost always sell in more than one place. There is a Shopify store, a Faire line sheet for stockists, sometimes Etsy or a WooCommerce site, and a market stall or pop-up on top. Every one of them draws down the same physical garments, and behind those garments the same fabric.
Stocksmith connects them to a single inventory, so a 24-unit wholesale order and a run of web sales are visible against the same stock and the same materials pool. Order imports are automatic; the cadence is set by your plan, running daily on Indie and hourly on Business and Growth.
Stock levels are pushed back automatically to Shopify, WooCommerce, Etsy, Faire and Square on the Indie plan and above, so your storefront count follows your production rather than lagging behind it. Amazon is order-import only and needs the Business plan.
Order #1043 · 3 items
2 min ago
Wholesale · 24 units
18 min ago
Order 114-220 · 1 item
1 hr ago
Apparel covers several production models that look different on the shop floor and behave identically in an inventory system. All three below run on the same materials, bills of materials and production runs.
You buy fabric, cut it, and sew garments in size runs. Fabric is the dominant cost and the dominant risk, so it is tracked in its own unit with reorder points that reflect lead times from the mill rather than shelf counts.
Yield loss in the cut is part of the bill of materials, not a rounding error you absorb later.
You buy blanks and add value with stitching, print or heat transfer. The blank, the thread, the stabiliser and the backing are all materials, and the decorated garment is a distinct product built from them.
That structure is what makes stitch-count pricing hold up. There is a full worked example in our guide to pricing embroidery per stitch.
Leather, soles, hardware and linings assemble into a finished pair across a size run, usually through more component levels than a garment needs.
Multi-level bills of materials handle the depth, and sizes sit as variations of one product rather than a dozen unrelated SKUs.
Running apparel production on spreadsheets
With Stocksmith
It comes down to whether you need multi-level bills of materials and lot tracking. Pro ($24/month, or $20/month billed annually) and Studio ($49/month, $41/month annually) cover materials, products, costing and channel connections.
Indie ($99/month, $83/month annually) is the one most apparel brands land on. It adds multi-level components, so a cut-and-sewn body can be a sub-assembly, plus material lot tracking for dye lots and automatic stock push-back to your sales channels. Business ($199/month, $166/month annually) adds the Amazon connection and hourly order imports.
See the full plan comparison →Yes. Materials and products are separate levels with their own units. Fabric is held as a material in metres or yards, trims and labels by the piece, and finished garments as products counted in units. The bill of materials is what links them: it records how much fabric a given style consumes, so producing 120 tees deducts the right number of metres without you converting anything by hand.
Sizes and colourways are variations of one product, not separate products. A tee in five sizes and three colourways is one style with fifteen variations, each holding its own stock count and its own bill of materials where the fabric consumption differs by size. You get per-variation stock levels without fifteen disconnected records to maintain.
Yes, and the record is the same either way. You still own the materials, you still commit them to a run, and the run still produces finished garments across a size break. Record the production run when the finished goods come back and materials deduct while stock is added. Expected arrival dates on incoming fabric and production deadlines on runs give you the timeline view that matters most when the sewing happens somewhere else.
Yes, through material lot tracking, which is available on the Indie plan and above. Lot numbers go on the fabric when you receive it and carry through the cutting run into the finished garments and out to the orders that shipped them. If a roll turns out to be faulty or off-shade, you can list the garments it produced and the customers who received them, rather than emailing everyone who bought that style.
Yes. A decorated garment is a product with a bill of materials like any other: the blank, the thread, the stabiliser and the packaging. Stocksmith counts blanks down as you decorate them and gives you a real cost per decorated piece, which is what makes a stitch-count price defensible rather than a number you inherited from a competitor's rate card.
Orders import from both into a single inventory, so a wholesale order on Faire and a run of Shopify sales draw down the same garments. Import cadence is set by your plan: daily on Indie, hourly on Business and Growth. Automatic stock push-back to Shopify, WooCommerce, Etsy, Faire and Square is available on Indie and above; the push to Faire sends quantity only, not pricing or listing content.
Your material list with current supplier prices, your styles with their size and colourway breakdown, and a bill of materials for each style. Most brands start with their best-selling three or four styles rather than the whole range, because those are the ones where a wrong cost figure is doing the most damage. Bulk importing is available for materials, products and recipes, so an existing spreadsheet is a starting point rather than something to retype.
Track fabric by the metre and know when to reorder.
Stock by size and colourway, in Excel.
Materials, styles and finished garments on one sheet.
Pattern-making through to finishing, for small production runs.
Measuring bolts and remnants, and when a spreadsheet stops working.
A worked example, with the material costs included.
Which code to file under, and why cut-and-sew differs from retail.
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