How do size specs and grading work?

A spec is a table of points of measure: each row has a code, a base size value, a plus and minus tolerance, and a grade increment that generates the other sizes. Templates hold the house rules, and a spec starts from one: the starter ships a tops base and a bottoms base. When a sample is measured, the actuals are entered against the same rows and judged against tolerance.

What does the time-and-action engine actually compute?

Each milestone is an offset in days from an anchor date on the order, usually ex-factory. From the anchor, every milestone gets a computed date, a status of on track, due soon or overdue, an owner, and optionally a predecessor it cannot logically precede. Change the anchor and the calendar recomputes.

How are lab dips and fabric tests recorded?

As check records: typed rounds against the colorway or material, each with its own result and, when it fails, a disposition: use as is, rework, or scrap. A failed round can open a follow-on, so round two is linked to round one instead of starting a fresh history.

What does change control mean for a colorway?

An approved colorway cannot be edited directly. A change request opens a working copy, the edits happen there, a reviewer sees exactly what changed, and applying the approval writes the changes back and cuts an immutable revision. The history of every approved state stays readable.

Is the cost sheet a real garment costing?

It is a landed-cost sheet per colorway: materials from the BOM at consumption plus wastage, labor and overhead, margin against a target cost, then duty and freight lines to landed. Costs entered in CNY or EUR convert at rates you set. It does not know your negotiated volume breaks; it answers what this colorway costs to make and land.

It is on the pricing page and you can work out your bill without talking to anyone. That is deliberate, and it is one of the clearer differences between us and most of this category.

Apparel

The line is designed. The season will not wait.

Every style ships on a date that was set before the fabric existed. Between here and ex-factory sit lab dips, size specs, sample rounds and a materials BOM per colorway, and each one is someone's job with a deadline counted back from the ship date. ManyRows holds the line and the calendar in one place, so the record and the deadline stop living in different files.

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Two halves, one record

The line, and the proof

A colorway is a claim: this fabric, this consumption, these measurements, this cost. The rest of the season is spent proving the claim before bulk. Both halves belong on the same record.

The line

Season, Style, Colorway

The hierarchy every brand already draws on a whiteboard, as records that hold together.

Colorway is the buyable unit: its own materials BOM, cost sheet and approvals
A materials BOM per colorway: fabrics and trims with consumption and wastage
Mills and factories as records, so a material knows who supplies it
Colorways are change-controlled: an approved one does not change without a review

The proof

Specs, dips and samples

The evidence a style is right, attached to the record it is evidence for.

Size specs: POM rows with plus/minus tolerances and per-size grading
Measured sample actuals land beside the spec, judged against tolerance
Lab dips and fabric tests as typed check rounds with a recorded disposition
Sample records track each round physically sent and what came back

Time and action

The calendar counts backward

A production order carries a time-and-action calendar: milestones as offsets from the ship date, each with an owner, a status and, where it matters, a predecessor. It is the industry's oldest tool, minus the spreadsheet.

The anchor

Count-back from ex-factory

Set the order's ex-factory date and the whole calendar computes from it: lab dips at minus 75 days, bulk fabric ordered at minus 70, PP sample, cutting, sewing, final inspection. Weekends can be skipped, and moving the anchor moves everything downstream of it.

The chain

Dependencies and owners

A milestone can name its predecessor, so bulk fabric cannot be in-house before its PO is placed, and each row carries who is responsible. The cross-order workbench shows every milestone from every order in one place, so Monday morning is one screen, not five spreadsheets.

on track: The milestone's date is comfortably ahead. Nothing to chase.
due soon: The date is close. The responsible party's name is on the row.
overdue: The date has passed without the milestone being done, and every view of the order says so.

Approved means approved

Change control on the colorway

Once a colorway is approved, edits go through a change request: a working copy, a visible diff, a reviewer, and an immutable revision when it lands. The BOM your factory cut against last month is still there, exactly as it was.

The cost sheet rides the same record: materials at consumption plus wastage, labor, overhead and margin against a target, then duty and freight to landed cost, with CNY and EUR converting at rates you set. When the colorway is revised, the numbers that justified the old price are in the old revision.

One click

A working season, already populated

The Apparel starter is a populated project: three seasons, five styles and their colorways, a materials library sourced from named mills, production orders, and the bulk-production calendar template ready to put on them, so you can judge the product on a real season rather than an empty screen.

102seed records, including 37 material BOM lines
12colorways under change control, across 5 styles
2size-spec templates, each 5 POMs with tolerances and grade rules
8T&A milestones counted back from ex-factory, with owners

Plus 22 fabrics and trims from 4 mills, landed-cost sheets with duty and freight lines, and GOTS, GRS, OEKO-TEX, ISO and BCI certificates on the expiry rail, the lapsed ones already flagged.

When this is the wrong tool

If you are buying purchasing, invoicing and inventory, that is an ERP; our production order anchors the calendar and the material requirements, it does not cut checks. If you want your design tools writing straight into PLM, we do not ship an Adobe or CLO plugin; images and tech-pack files attach to the record, with numbered callouts, and that is the bridge. And if you want a sourcing marketplace that finds you new mills, we hold the suppliers you already trust, not a directory of ones you don't. Better to say all of this now than after a migration.

Questions

How do size specs and grading work?: A spec is a table of points of measure: each row has a code, a base size value, a plus and minus tolerance, and a grade increment that generates the other sizes. Templates hold the house rules, and a spec starts from one: the starter ships a tops base and a bottoms base. When a sample is measured, the actuals are entered against the same rows and judged against tolerance.
What does the time-and-action engine actually compute?: Each milestone is an offset in days from an anchor date on the order, usually ex-factory. From the anchor, every milestone gets a computed date, a status of on track, due soon or overdue, an owner, and optionally a predecessor it cannot logically precede. Change the anchor and the calendar recomputes.
How are lab dips and fabric tests recorded?: As check records: typed rounds against the colorway or material, each with its own result and, when it fails, a disposition: use as is, rework, or scrap. A failed round can open a follow-on, so round two is linked to round one instead of starting a fresh history.
What does change control mean for a colorway?: An approved colorway cannot be edited directly. A change request opens a working copy, the edits happen there, a reviewer sees exactly what changed, and applying the approval writes the changes back and cuts an immutable revision. The history of every approved state stays readable.
Is the cost sheet a real garment costing?: It is a landed-cost sheet per colorway: materials from the BOM at consumption plus wastage, labor and overhead, margin against a target cost, then duty and freight lines to landed. Costs entered in CNY or EUR convert at rates you set. It does not know your negotiated volume breaks; it answers what this colorway costs to make and land.
What does it cost?: It is on the pricing page and you can work out your bill without talking to anyone. That is deliberate, and it is one of the clearer differences between us and most of this category.

Start free

Open the apparel starter

Spin up a project, pick Apparel PLM, and you are looking at a populated season in about a minute.

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