How to Start a Streetwear Brand: The Cost Nobody Publishes for Overseas Production

It’s easy to find that a US cut-and-sew shop will quote you $18–50 for a tee or hoodie, $150–400 for a sample, and an 8–14 week turnaround. What’s much harder to find is the equivalent number for the path most streetwear brands actually end up on once their first 50-unit test run sells out: overseas OEM production. That number isn’t hidden because it’s bad. It’s hidden because most places publishing it want a sales call before they’ll say it out loud. We’re a cut-and-sew factory in Suzhou, Jiangsu, running that path — here it is without the call.

There are two manufacturing paths for a first streetwear order, and most content written about “starting a streetwear brand” doesn’t say which one it’s actually quoting. Everything below is for our path — overseas OEM — laid out so you can weigh it against whatever a domestic quote just handed you.

Domestic US cut-and-sew gets you a 8–14 week production window and easy in-person quality checks, at $18–50 per tee or hoodie plus $150–400 per sample. That’s the right call if speed-to-market matters more than margin, or your first run is small enough that per-unit cost barely moves your total spend.

Overseas OEM production trades a longer pipeline (add 2–3 weeks of shipping) for per-unit costs that are typically 5–15x lower at the same quality tier — which is what makes a $65 hoodie retail price actually profitable at streetwear volumes. Below are the real numbers for that path, not a “contact us for pricing” placeholder.

Your tech pack needs graded spec measurements, fabric weight target, wash/shrinkage tolerance, and construction notes (raglan vs. set-in sleeve, ribbing vs. binding at cuffs). We cover what a complete tech pack needs to contain, and why incomplete ones get quoted wrong, in our clothing tech pack guide — send that alongside your first quote request, not after your first sample comes back wrong.

“Heavyweight” isn’t a spec. Here’s what heavyweight actually means in grams per square meter, and what we run:

Garment	GSM range	Fabric
Boxy / heavy tee	220–280 GSM	Combed cotton
Heavy hoodie	400–500 GSM	French terry or brushed fleece

Fabric is pre-shrunk to a ≤3% shrinkage tolerance — ask any supplier for their shrinkage number specifically, because an unlisted tolerance is usually a tolerance nobody tested. Certification-wise, our fabric runs under OEKO-TEX Standard 100 (certificate SH025 206558) and Global Recycled Standard (4.0 TE-00110085) for recycled-content runs, with BSCI and ISO 9001 compliance at factory level. Ask for certificate numbers directly — a real certification is independently searchable, a claimed one isn’t.

The domestic-manufacturing numbers floating around cite 50–150 units for a first run, 300–500 at a traditional factory. Neither tells you whether that’s per style or per colorway, and that distinction changes your real minimum spend by multiples the moment you want more than one colorway per drop.

Most overseas factories quote 500–1,000 pieces per style before they’ll even sample it. Ours is 100 pieces per colorway per design, sizes mixed freely. Custom woven labels carry a separate 200-piece-per-colorway minimum. If 100/colorway is still above your first-drop budget, see our breakdown of how low-MOQ manufacturing actually works before you assume every factory’s minimum is negotiable the same way.

Garment	Small batch (100 pcs/colorway)	Bulk (500+ pcs)
Heavy tee	$1.20–2.00 FOB	$0.53–0.93 FOB
Crewneck sweatshirt	$2.53–3.67 FOB	$1.80–2.33 FOB
Heavy hoodie	$3.20–4.33 FOB	$1.73–2.33 FOB

Compare that to $18–50 per unit domestic — the gap is exactly why streetwear brands running real per-drop volume move to overseas OEM once validation is done. FOB means priced at the China port (Shanghai/Ningbo); freight, duties, and decoration (screen print, embroidery, foil, DTG) are separate line items. Payment is a 30/70 split — 30% starts production, 70% before shipment.

1. Sampling: 7–10 workdays.
2. Bulk production: 25–40 days after sample approval — longer than a tee-only order because hoodie construction (drawstrings, pouch pockets, ribbing) adds sewing steps.
3. Reorders: 10–15 days, once your tech pack and approved sample are on file.
4. Quote turnaround: 8–12 hours once you send specs.

That’s roughly 5–7 weeks sample-to-delivery on a first order — add 2–3 weeks ocean freight, or ask for air freight if the drop date is fixed.

Ask any manufacturer for three things before you commit: their business licence, their certification numbers (OEKO-TEX/GRS/BSCI — checkable in the issuers’ public databases in about two minutes), and a proto sample sewn on their own production line. A trading company can forward photos of someone else’s factory floor, but it cannot sew your proto sample in-house in 7–10 days. Ask what AQL standard they inspect against and what happens if a batch fails — ours does not ship if it fails AQL 2.5, it gets reworked or remade before it leaves the factory. Before we cut bulk fabric, your approved sample is logged as a written production standard — fabric weight in GSM, color reference, and construction details — so “basically the same” isn’t a judgment call after 300 units arrive; if the bulk run falls outside that documented tolerance, it gets remade, not shipped. We also work on 30/70 terms or full Alibaba Trade Assurance escrow, so your deposit stays protected until the goods exist and pass inspection.

• Ordering hoodie GSM based on how it looks in a product photo. A 320 GSM fleece photographs identically to a 480 GSM fleece. The difference shows up the first time a customer wears it in cold weather and messages you about it.
• Treating MOQ as per-style when it’s per-colorway. Plan your colorway count against your real budget before you fall in love with a 4-colorway drop.
• Skipping a wash-test sample. Pre-shrink tolerance only means something if you’ve actually washed the sample before approving bulk.
• No written deviation policy. Get it in writing what happens if bulk fabric doesn’t match the approved sample — before you pay the 30% deposit, not after 300 hoodies arrive a shade off.