Yes. Our factory develops shapewear samples without a tech pack every week, and for most of the brands we work with, that is the normal starting point, not the exception. If you run an established apparel line, swimwear, activewear, lingerie, and you are expanding into shapewear, you may have strong design capability in your own category but no one who can spec compression zones, knit density, or bonded construction. That gap is exactly what a factory development team is for.
Most of the articles you will find on this question are written by design agencies that sell tech pack services, so their answer is always the same: you need one before any factory will talk to you. From the factory side, the honest answer is different. A tech pack is not your entry ticket. It is part of what we deliver back to you.
What you actually need to send us
When a brand contacts us without a tech pack, our sales team asks for the same few things every time. This list is the real minimum, taken from how our first email exchange with a new client actually goes:
- A reference: a physical sample you can courier to us, a product link, or clear photos from a few angles. A garment we can put on the table is best, because our pattern room can measure it directly.
- Your target size range, including whether you need extended or plus sizes.
- What you want different from the reference: firmer compression, a different fabric feel, your logo, a colorway.
- Your target market and rough price positioning, so we sample with the right yarn and construction instead of guessing.
That is the whole list. You do not need flat sketches, a bill of materials, or graded measurement charts. If you can describe what you want the garment to do for your customer, we can translate that into specifications.
How we turn your reference into a sample, and a tech pack
Once your reference arrives, our pattern and knitting team takes it apart on paper: construction, compression mapping, yarn composition, finishing. For seamless styles this becomes a machine program; for cut-and-sew styles it becomes a pattern set. Either way, the output includes a spec sheet with measurements, materials, and tolerances.
That spec sheet is your tech pack. It is created during development and confirmed by you at the sample stage, which means by the time you approve a sample, the document a tech pack is supposed to provide already exists, written by the people who will actually run your production. If you are still deciding between developing your own design and adapting one of ours, our guide to seamless shapewear OEM vs ODM explains where each model fits.
Development samples ship in 7 days. If the first sample is not right, one round of revision is free, so a missing tech pack does not turn into an endless paid sampling loop.
Shapewear sample fees without a tech pack: the real numbers
Sample pricing is the part most factories keep vague, so here is ours as of 2026:
| Sample type | Fee | Lead time |
|---|---|---|
| Stock style, no changes | $7–15 per piece | Ships within 3 days |
| Existing seamless style with your logo or colorway | $50–100 per colorway | 7 days |
| Fully custom seamless development | $80–120 per piece | 7 days |
| Fully custom cut-and-sew development | $50–80 per piece | 7 days |
Freight is billed separately. The development fee covers what the sample actually costs us to make: machine setup and yarn for a single-piece run, plus pattern room time.
The fee is also not money you lose. It is credited in full against your bulk order once it reaches the minimum order quantity, and that applies to first-time clients, not only established accounts. In practice, the sample fee works like a deposit on development, not a charge for it.
When your sample is approved and you are ready to move into production, our private label shapewear manufacturing team takes the confirmed spec straight into bulk. The full process from sample approval onward is covered in our seamless shapewear sample order guide.
Quick questions buyers ask us
Does the sample fee include shipping? No, freight is calculated separately by destination and courier.
What if the sample is wrong? One revision round is free. After you confirm the revised sample, that confirmed piece becomes the quality standard for bulk production.
Can you make it exactly like another brand’s product? We develop based on your reference, but we re-engineer the construction rather than cloning it. You get a garment that performs the way your reference does, built on our patterns, which also keeps you clear of design IP problems on your side.
The short version
You do not need a tech pack to start sampling shapewear. You need a reference, a size range, and a clear idea of what you want the garment to do. The tech pack gets built on our side during development, and you approve it in the form of a physical sample within 7 days. Send us your reference and we will tell you, before any fee, which development route and fee tier your project falls into.
