How to find a CMT apparel factory

A reader asked me recently how he might find a good CMT factory to make garments. Here is my advice.

The first question is: where?

• For buyers based in Europe: logical choices are Tunisia and Morocco, or Eastern Europe.
• For buyers based in the US: Central America and Mexico should be good choices.
• If you want to purchase large volumes and need very low prices: India, Bangladesh, China, and Pakistan might make sense, depending on the type of garments you plan to make.

The second question is, how to get contacts of good CMT factories?

The difficulty is that CMT factories usually don’t exhibit in trade shows. But I guess you can approach certain manufacturers that exhibit, and ask them if they can work for you under CMT terms.

They usually try to avoid CMT work for two reasons:

• The buyer can easily compare costs between several factories, so there is little profit to be made.
• A factory that buys the fabric always hopes to keep some of it after the production run is over. Often it is their major source of profit.

However, some of them will be happy to accept, if they are looking for new business to fill their capacity and if your peak season doesn’t correspond to theirs.

Another way you might find a good CMT factory is by asking the fabric and accessories suppliers. They know a lot of these factories, since they deliver products to them.

Anybody has other tips?