Stock Rolls Versus Custom Runs: Choosing Between 100 Metres and 1,000

The choice between buying from a mill’s stock range and commissioning a custom run is usually framed as a quality decision. It is not. Both routes can be produced to the same standard, and the real trade is between speed and commitment on one side and specification freedom on the other. Stock ships from held inventory with no minimum order. A custom run starts at 1,000 metres and takes the weeks required to develop, dye and weave it. Which one is right depends on your sales visibility and how tolerant your cash flow is, not on which is better cloth.

What Stock Actually Gives You

Stock means the mill has already woven and finished the fabric and is holding it. The immediate benefit is the absence of a minimum: 100 metres can ship, which makes stock the natural route for a first season, a sampling program, or a designer testing whether a silhouette works before committing capital.

The second benefit is timing. There is no development cycle to absorb, so the fabric is available on a shipping schedule rather than a production schedule. For a brand that needs to place a cut-and-sew order inside a narrow window, that difference decides whether a season launches on time.

The cost is specification freedom. The weight, colour and blend are what the mill chose to hold, and no amount of negotiation changes the cloth that already exists. The practical way to work with that constraint is to select the garment concept around the available fabric rather than the other way round, which is why the stock range rewards buyers who browse it before locking a design. The full held range is listed on our Lagerbestandsstoffe Seite.

What a Custom Run Buys

A custom run inverts the trade. You gain control over weight, colour and composition, which means the fabric can be built around the garment instead of the garment being adapted to the fabric. That control is what allows a brand to own a signature hand feel, and it is the reason established labels rarely buy their core cloth from a stock range.

The price of that control is volume and time. The practical floor is 1,000 metres, which is the point at which a mill can economically set up a run, and the lead time includes yarn sourcing, dyeing, weaving and finishing. Neither is negotiable in the way buyers hope, because both are consequences of how a weaving mill schedules production.

Commercial terms belong in this decision alongside the technical ones. The delivery term determines who owns the transit clock and who carries risk after the goods leave the mill, and the International Chamber of Commerce publishes the Incoterms rules that define those responsibilities. A custom run quoted FOB and the same run quoted DDP are not comparable on price alone, and choosing the term before comparing quotations is what makes the comparison meaningful.

The Sequencing That Reduces Risk

The lowest-risk path for a new program is to run both routes in sequence rather than choosing one. Prove the silhouette and the market on stock fabric at low volume, then commit to a custom run once sell-through is visible. This converts the custom run from a bet into a reorder with known demand behind it.

When that transition happens, carry the approved stock swatch forward as the reference. A custom run that is intended to match a stock cloth still has to be matched to a physical standard, and the swatch removed from the stock roll is the only reliable reference for that. Programs that skip this step often end up with a custom run that is correct in isolation and visibly different next to the first season’s garments.

For established programs the calculation is simpler: if annual volume comfortably exceeds the custom floor in a single colourway, the custom route usually wins on unit cost and on specification fit. If volume is spread thinly across many colourways, stock is often the only economical route, because the custom floor applies per run rather than per program.

For brands weighing the two routes against each other, the arithmetic on a real program is worked through in custom versus stock fabric cost for a 500 metre collection.

A Practical Decision Rule

Three questions settle it. Does the garment need a specification the stock range cannot provide? Is the expected volume per colourway above 1,000 metres? Can the program absorb the development lead time without missing a selling window? Two yes answers point to custom; anything less points to stock, or to starting on stock while the answers become clearer.

The rule matters because the two routes are not reversible at the same cost. Committing to a custom run and discovering the volume is not there leaves finished fabric with no garment to go into. Starting on stock and discovering the volume is there costs only the difference between stock and custom unit pricing on the first season, which is the cheaper mistake to make.

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Video: High-Quality Fabrics for Designers

Browse the held range on our Lagervorrat page first, then send the garments that need their own cloth to the team behind our boucle fabric manufacturing.