Sourcing Sustainable Fabric When You’re a Small Brand
How does a small brand source sustainable fabric in a world where mass production is still the norm?
Franky Dune image from Modtissimo trade event in Porto Portugal
Selecting the right fabric is a fundamental element in bringing your design to life in the way that you imagined it.
Sourcing fabric on your own - regardless of your brand’s size - is time consuming and can feel overwhelming. Between building the business and you’re knee deep in spreadsheets; keeping up with the daily feedings to the social media algorithms; and creating the brand’s designs, managing your time quickly becomes a key factor to staying on top of everything and not burning out.
Hiring a sourcing agency isn’t a reality for all brands, and possibly you want to be doing the searching yourself anyways? We can relate to that.
We compiled our top 5 places for fashion brands to search for fabric suppliers when you are sourcing low MOQs.
1) Fashion Trade Shows
From New York to Paris, London to Porto there are fashion trade shows in most major cities. At fashion trade events, you will come across many fabric suppliers that sell in 300m, 500m, even 700m minimums. But over the course of the on again off again lockdown covid times, a surgence in small brands emerged, and many fabric suppliers made a pivot to offer lower minimums.
From suppliers like this, a brand will be buying fabric that is stock fabric, meaning the fabric is already produced and ready to measure, cut and sell. If you are a fashion brand looking to develop your fabric, chances are you will be looking at 300m minimum per colour.
Additionally, at trade shows there are wholesale fabric companies that set up a stall and offer fabric sales that can start as low as 1m, but often start from 10m and upwards. These fabrics are generally made in multiple mills around the globe. For better transparency, some wholesalers have taken to listing the mill on the fabric information sheet.
2) Social Media
If going to trade shows is not a possibility for you right now, look to social media. Fabric suppliers generally have some sort of social media presence, be it Facebook, Instagram or Linked In.
Find specific Facebook groups by searching Sustainable Fashion, Ethical fashion and so on. In there you will see there are many - so many! - people asking for fabric suppliers/garment manufacturers that work in lower minimums or with small brands. Often there are name drops in the comments. Use the group’s search bar to find these previous posts.
While I recommend connecting with the fabric supplier on their social media, with a like, and a comment or two, reaching out to them for sales is best done via their business email, which is easy enough to find on their website.
3) Deadstock Suppliers
Consider using deadstock fabrics in your collection. Often deadstock suppliers will sell in smaller quantities. Sometimes there is an initial upfront minimum order quantity (MOQ) of a certain amount. For example: first order must meet a minimum of €500/$500/£500 before tax and shipping costs.
Deadstock fabric is a great way to use what is already made and a great way to keep your brand fresh with different fabrics, or for creating capsule collections. However, it does mean you are limited to whatever the supplier has, and more often than not, the fabric is untraceable.
4) Bloggers
Some sewing bloggers and small brands, especially those that sell on Etsy have taken to listing a few of their favourite places to buy fabric on their blogs. While sometimes the information is redundant, possibly there is a supplier or two listed that you haven’t heard about before.
5) Online Directories and Exhibitors List
Trade shows have their list of exhibitors posted on their websites, but often access is only to those who have attended the trade show. Filtering through the exhibitors lists doesn’t always give you the information you are looking for, and so much time is lost filtering through all the suppliers yourself. But if you have the will and the time, start looking through the suppliers listed on trade shows closest to you. If you can, filter the search by MOQ.
Bonus Tip
Sourcing agencies all have their own list of resources, but you may find they are either in a vault never to be shared with anyone outside of the agency, or they are not for small brands looking for sourcing fabric suppliers with small MOQs.
Over the years of networking and meeting fabric manufacturers, wholesale fabric suppliers and product manufacturers, we’ve filtered the low MOQs suppliers to create an epic directory of suppliers that sell specifically in low MOQs for brands like yours.
We left out our network of higher MOQ suppliers so you don’t have to go through the emotional experience of finding a fabric that you love only to learn the fabric supplier only sells in higher MOQs.
Our directory is global, meaning we include every continent (except Antarctica - not for a lack of looking 🙃 ).
We provide access to our directory on an annual fee, and with every trade show that we attend and every fabric supplier that we meet, all updates made over the course of the year are free. Recent updates include new product manufacturers that produce in lower minimums.
UPDATE! The directory is now available as a ONE TIME PAYMENT!
We will no longer be charging brands a reaccuring fee, and instead broke the directory into 3 main directories of low MOQ fabric suppliers, low MOQ product manufacturers and lastly a Blanks Supplier directory. You can choose which directory will best suit your brand’s needs for and we’ll only charge you once. Sadly this does mean we won’t be updating the directory as often as we were in the past.
Are you following us on Instagram yet? We share a lot over on there, from our trips to fabric and product manufacturers to a few other behind the scenes.