A Sixty Metre Run, a Hundred and Twenty Metre Reorder: Yarn, Window, Tolerance

The reorder will not be the same cloth, and no clause can make it so. What makes a 120 metre run at six months look like the 60 metre run in your lookbook is three things handled before the first run ships. Yarn you paid to reserve rather than hoped to find. A production window inside which the mill still holds the warp plan, the reed draft and the finish recipe. And three measured lines on the order confirmation that say what the new cloth is judged against, how far it may drift, and what happens when it does. Put those three in place and the reorder becomes a controlled event. Leave them out and you own a shade argument with nothing on your side except a photograph.

Why Six Months Changes Cloth That Uses the Same Recipe

Between the first run and the reorder, the yarn is almost certainly from a different lot. Wool is a natural fibre with a spread of fibre diameter, length and crimp inside any delivery, and the mill blends to a target rather than to an identity. A new lot means a new blend, a new spinning batch, and a slightly different dye uptake, which is the mechanism behind the shade movement every buyer has met. The same happens at the dye vessel: a bath remade for 120 metres is not the bath that dyed 60, and the recipe is a formula that produces a result inside a tolerance, not a formula that produces an identical piece of cloth.

Quantity itself changes the process. A 60 metre length may be woven on a beam shared with other work and dyed in a small vessel. A 120 metre length may need two beams, a different beam length, and a bath of a different size, and each of those changes tension, sett and the way the cloth behaves in finishing. A reorder is therefore not a repeat of an operation. It is a new operation that has to be steered toward the same standard, and the steering is done with material you control and dates you book, not with adjectives in a purchase order.

This is why reorder consistency in cloth is often described as a dye lot problem when it is partly a yarn problem. Dye lots and colour consistency covers how far a lot can move and why lot one and lot five never agree exactly. The practical question for a small brand is narrower: which of those variables can you own at 60 metres, and which do you have to buy in advance.

Reserve Yarn, Not Cloth: The Line to Add to the First Order

The strongest single action available to a designer ordering 60 metres is to buy yarn for the reorder at the same time, from the same lot, and have it held. Yarn is the input that determines count, twist, fibre blend and the way the cloth takes dye. Cloth that comes from a held lot of the same yarn is closer to your standard than cloth that comes from a fresh lot, even when the second run is woven on different hardware.

Reserving yarn is a commercial arrangement, not a promise. It has four parts and all four should be in writing. The first is identity: yarn supplier, count and ply, blend, spinning route, lot number, and how many kilos are being held against your name. The second is quantity: enough for the reorder, with a margin for weaving waste and for the piece you will inevitably need to test. The third is custody: whether the yarn stays at the mill, at the spinner, or with you, and who pays for storage. The fourth is release: when the yarn is drawn down, what happens if you never place the second order, and whether the hold expires.

Custody is the part designers underestimate. Yarn held at a mill for half a year is exposed to damp, to oil mist, to dust and to pests, and a woollen yarn with a soft twist is more vulnerable than a worsted one. The storage conditions that keep cloth out of trouble apply to yarn even more sharply, and storing rolls and yarn in a workshop sets out what goes wrong and how to wrap and rotate stock. If you hold the yarn yourself you own the risk but you also own the evidence, which is worth something when a shade argument starts. If the mill holds it, ask for the storage location and the condition it is kept in, and add a line saying the yarn is inspected before the reorder is woven.

The money question is honest arithmetic rather than accounting theory. Yarn bought early ties up cash for months and may never be used if the style fails. Set that against the cost of a reorder that does not match, which includes the samples you have to remake, the stockists you have to explain it to, and the cloth you cannot sell at full price. For most first ranges the reserve is only sensible on the one or two colourways that carry the range, and it is usually cheaper to reserve yarn than to reserve finished cloth, because cloth also ties up the weaving and finishing charges.

The Reorder Window: The Number Nobody Puts in Writing

Every mill keeps production records for a period. During that period it can remake your cloth with the same warp plan, the same reed draft, the same weave chain and the same finish recipe, and after it the information is archived, discarded, or simply no longer trusted by the people on the floor. That period is the reorder window, and it is the single most useful number you can ask for at the quotation stage, because it tells you when your second order stops being a rerun and becomes a new development.

Ask three things. How long after the first run the mill will still hold the warp plan and the machine settings. How long it will hold the finish recipe and the name of the chemical products used. And what it charges to reopen a quality after that period, which usually means a new development charge, a new beam, a fresh dye recipe and a fresh finish trial. A reorder placed inside the window uses records the mill already has. A reorder placed outside it buys all of that again, at small-lot prices.

Put the window on your own calendar. If the mill holds records for a shorter period than your selling cycle, the reorder has to be planned inside it even if the style is still selling, or you accept that the second run will be a new cloth and price the range accordingly. A designer who plans a collection in two drops six months apart needs that number before the first drop is cut, because it decides whether the second drop can use the same standard or needs its own approval round.

The Finish Recipe Needs a Revision Number, Not an Adjective

Finish is where most reorder differences are actually born. Milling, washing, drying, pressing and any chemical application change the hand, the surface and the dimensions of the cloth, and a recipe described as a soft finish is not a recipe. Ask for the finish as a record: the sequence of wet and dry operations, the equipment used for each, the products with their generic chemistry and application stage, the target mass per square metre, the target usable width, the dimensional change the cloth is expected to show, and the hand and surface the result is meant to match.

Then ask for a revision number and a date. A recipe with a revision can be reused or deliberately changed, and a change can be flagged to you. A recipe without one drifts as products are substituted and operators change, and you find out only when the cloth arrives. Two things in particular are worth pinning. The first is any finishing stage that is subcontracted, since a partner plant may use its own chemistry. The second is the finishing batch, because a small run may be finished in a bath or on a range shared with other cloth, and the batch number is what lets the mill say which cloth shared your conditions.

Three Lines That Decide the Argument

The first line names the standard. Not the lookbook, and not a photograph. A physical standard of one or two metres, signed and dated, sealed against alteration, kept by both sides, and referred to by its own reference in the order. Photographs are useful for a conversation and useless as an arbiter, because a phone camera changes hue, contrast and warmth without asking.

The second line puts a number and a method on the drift. Shade is judged against the standard under an agreed light source, and the difference is either assessed visually against a grey scale or measured instrumentally and expressed as a colour difference. ISO 105-J03 defines how a colour difference is calculated. ISO 105-A02 covers the grey scale used for visual assessment of change. Both are cited so that the number in your order means the same thing to both parties, and neither tells you what tolerance to accept, because that is a commercial decision you make and write down. Add a check under a second light source, because two cloths that match under one lamp and split under another are a familiar and expensive surprise. If the number is going to settle an argument rather than start one, it should come from a laboratory both sides recognise, and in the wool trade that recognition has a formal route: the labs licensed by the IWTO are accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 for the methods they are licensed to report.

The third line says what happens. If the reorder falls outside the tolerance, is it redyed, credited, replaced or rejected, who pays the freight in each case, and what happens to cloth that has already been cut. A tolerance without a remedy is a description of a problem. The remedy can be modest, but it has to be specific enough that nobody has to invent it while a container is waiting.

What the Order Confirmation Should Actually Say

The confirmation is the document that survives everyone’s memory, so it should carry the whole arrangement rather than a reference to a previous order. Name the standard it is judged against and the date that standard was signed. Name the yarn: supplier, count and ply, blend, spinning route, lot number and, where relevant, the amount held in reserve. Name the dye route and the finishing recipe with its revision. State the measured requirements with their tolerances as agreed, covering mass, usable width, dimensional change after the care the garment will get, and shade. State the quantity and the tolerance on quantity, because weaving and finishing produce a length near the order rather than exactly on it.

Then add the administrative clauses that make the technical ones work. Every roll marked with fabric lot, dye lot, yarn lot if it differs, finish batch, measured width and measured mass. A written approval gate before bulk, so that a trial piece or a lab dip is signed off before the full length is committed. Samples retained by both sides for the life of the reorder window. A statement that approval of a sample does not remove your right to reject cloth that does not meet the standard. And a line naming the mill’s own procedure for settling a dispute, so that a disagreement has a route rather than an argument.

The Physical Standard You Keep, and How to Keep It Useful

The standard is only an arbiter while it stays representative. Keep it out of daylight, because wool shifts under strong light over months, and keep it flat and wrapped rather than folded on a shelf where the fold line takes a permanent set. Keep a second piece of the same run as a handling sample, so the sealed piece is not opened every time somebody wants to feel the cloth. Write the reference, the date, the run and the colourway on the label and on the sealed bag. If you photograph it for a lookbook or a stockist pack, fix the camera distance and the light, include a neutral grey card, and note those conditions with the file, so the photograph can be compared with a later one rather than merely admired.

Then treat the standard as a live document. When a reorder is approved, the new piece does not silently replace the old one, because the old one is what the customer’s cloth was sold against. Either the reorder is judged against the original standard and recorded as within tolerance, or a new standard is created with its own date and the change is visible in the file. That record is what turns six months of memory into something a stockist, a factory or a small claims conversation can actually use.

If the Yarn Cannot Be Reserved

Sometimes the mill will not hold yarn, or the money is not there, or the spinner has sold the lot. The fallback is a controlled substitution rather than a hope. Ask for the proposed replacement yarn with its full identity, then require a trial length woven from it before the reorder is committed, finished on the same route and compared with the standard under the agreed light. If the difference is outside tolerance, the options are to accept it as a new colourway with its own name and its own standard, to split the reorder into a first piece that uses the remaining original yarn and a second piece in the new yarn, or to change the design so the difference stops mattering. What is not an option is weaving 120 metres and discovering the answer afterwards. Choosing between stock dye, yarn dye and piece dye explains why the route you pick at the first order sets how much of this you can control at the second, and the condition the reserve yarn is kept in decides whether the metres you paid for are still usable when you finally need them.