From your sketch to your own labelled sweaters — the full private-label path, what MOQ 250 means in practice, and why an English-speaking factory makes the workflow smoother.
Private label means the knitwear is made to your design and carries your brand — your label, your care content, your packaging — not a catalogue product with a sticker swapped on. For a Tanzanian boutique in Dar es Salaam, an online label selling across the region, or a homegrown fashion brand building a signature look, it is the route to a consistent, ownable product. This is how the process actually runs with us, end to end.
Everything starts with a clear brief. The richer your tech pack — measurements by size, gauge, yarn type and weight, stitch and rib detail, colours (ideally Pantone references), trims, labels and packaging — the closer the first sample lands. No tech pack yet? Send sketches, reference garments or even a sweater you love, and we will help translate it into a production-ready spec. Because we work in English, this back-and-forth happens directly, without a translation layer.
We quote against the spec and confirm yarn options — cotton and cotton blends, merino and lambswool, acrylic blends, or cashmere for premium lines. You will see how material choice, gauge and construction move the unit price before any sampling cost is committed.
We knit a physical sample to your spec. You receive it, wear-test it, and mark up fit, hand-feel, colour and finishing. Expect one or two revision rounds — this is normal and is exactly where a good factory earns its place. We iterate until the garment is right.
When the sample is correct, it becomes the sealed (approved) sample — the reference both sides measure the bulk against. Nothing goes into production until you have signed off on it. This single step prevents most production disputes.
You confirm quantities per style and colour against our MOQ of 250 pieces per style/colour. For larger or more complex runs we knit a pre-production (PP) sample from bulk yarn so the production setup is verified before the line opens.
Bulk knitting begins on our Shima Seiki and Stoll flat-knit machines, followed by linking, washing, finishing and pressing. Quality is checked in stages — yarn, knitting, linking and final — not only at the end, so issues are caught while they are still cheap to fix.
A final inspection to an agreed AQL, then folding, polybagging, your labels and care content, and cartonisation to your packing spec. We prepare the export and origin documents your shipment and TBS Certificate of Conformity will need.
The order ships from Mersin to Dar es Salaam. Your clearing agent handles the TBS conformity certificate, the TRA customs declaration, EAC duty and 18% VAT, then onward haulage to your warehouse. Plan the sea leg at roughly 20–28 days.
Our minimum is 250 pieces per style, per colour. That is deliberately accessible for a growing brand: you can launch two colourways of one sweater at 250 each, or test three styles, without committing to the thousands-per-style that large mills demand. It lets a boutique or online label put a real, ownable product into the market without locking up all its working capital in one drop.
If you are weighing colour and size depth, we will help you build the buy so you are not over-stocked on slow sizes — a common first-order mistake.
You do not have to bet the business on an unfamiliar factory. We encourage Tanzanian brands to begin with a contained first order — one or two styles near MOQ. You get to judge the things that actually matter: sample accuracy, how we communicate, whether production matches the sealed sample, packing quality, and how the documents and shipment to Dar es Salaam are handled.
A successful first order de-risks every order after it. Once the spec and the relationship are proven, repeat orders move faster — the tech pack and sealed sample already exist, so you skip much of the front-end work.
English is Tanzania's language of business and trade, and we run our entire client workflow in English — tech packs, sampling comments, production updates, inspection notes and shipping documents. For a Tanzanian brand that means no translation layer and far less room for the small misunderstandings that turn into wrong measurements or off colours. Compared with sourcing from a factory where every message passes through translation, that clarity is a genuine, practical edge — and it is the kind of thing that decides whether a season ships on time.
Send your tech pack, sketches or a reference garment. We'll come back with a quote, yarn options and a realistic sample-and-production timeline — and an honest view of landed cost into Tanzania, EAC duty and all.