Apparel Search has been a directory for the fashion industry since 1999. Alongside our listings of factories, wholesalers and retailers, we have been building free online tools that solve problems designers, brands, importers and manufacturers deal with every day. Each tool runs in your web browser, so nothing you enter is stored on our site, and most let you download your results for your own records.
Here is a tour of all ten, organized by the stage of the business where they help most. You can find them together on our Tools for the Apparel Industry page.
1. Know what your product really costs
Garment Cost Sheet
List the fabric, trims, packaging and labor for a style, and the tool works out the cost of one garment and of your whole order. When you are done, you can send the totals straight to the Landed Cost Calculator so the numbers carry through.
Helpful for: designers and small brands pricing a first collection, and sourcing teams comparing quotes.
Landed Cost Calculator
The price on a factory quote is not what the product costs you. This tool adds freight, insurance, duties, tariffs and fees to find the true cost per unit of bringing a product into your market, then helps you set wholesale and retail prices from there. It is built for importers of clothing, textiles, footwear and fashion accessories.
Helpful for: importers and brands deciding whether a style will still make money after it lands.
2. Get your specs and sizes right
Size Grading Calculator
Enter your base-size measurements and your own grade rules, and get a full graded spec table. Switch between inches and centimeters, choose your rounding, set tolerances, and download the table for your tech pack or to send to the factory.
Helpful for: technical designers and product developers who build size ranges.
Size Conversion Tool
Convert women's clothing, men's clothing and adult shoe sizes between US, UK, European, Italian, French and Japanese systems. The tool also shows the measurements behind each size, and you can download the full chart.
Helpful for: brands selling internationally, buyers working with overseas suppliers, and anyone answering "what size is that in my country?"
Fabric & Textile Unit Converter
Convert GSM to ounces per square yard, yards to meters, and yarn counts (tex, denier, Nm and Ne). It can also estimate fabric weight per length, roll weight and the number of rolls needed for an order.
Helpful for: fabric buyers and merchandisers who work with mills in different parts of the world.
3. Plan the order and the production schedule
Size Curve & Order Splitter
Split a total order across colors and sizes, rounded to your carton or pack sizes. The tool builds a ready-to-send order grid and checks your quantities against factory minimums.
Helpful for: buyers and production managers placing orders with factories.
Timeline Planner (T&A Calendar)
Build a time and action calendar for overseas or domestic production. Plan backward from the date you need goods, or forward from your start date, and add a delay buffer. You can download the plan or add the milestones to your own calendar.
Helpful for: anyone who has ever discovered, too late, that the schedule does not work.
4. Ship it and inspect it
Carton & Container Load Calculator
Enter mixed carton sizes and compare floor loading with US or EUR pallets. You get cubic meters (CBM), weight, chargeable weight and an estimate of the containers needed, with drawings of how the load fits.
Helpful for: logistics teams and importers planning shipments and comparing freight options.
AQL Inspection Sampling Calculator
Our newest tool helps you plan a quality inspection. Enter your order quantity, your inspection level and the AQL (Acceptable Quality Limit) you have agreed with the factory, and it tells you how many garments to inspect and how many defective pieces you can accept or must reject. For example, a lot of 1,000 pieces at General inspection level II and AQL 2.5 means inspecting 80 pieces: accept up to 5 with major defects, reject at 6.
It follows the ISO 2859-1 / ANSI/ASQ Z1.4 sampling plans, shows the chance a lot will pass at different defect rates, lets you enter your findings to get an accept or reject decision, and includes a plain-English guide to AQL for fashion and textile buyers. If you prefer reference charts, see our AQL charts, or the individual charts for 1.0, 1.5, 2.5, 4.0 and 6.5. For companies that can carry out inspections and testing for you, visit our quality testing page.
Helpful for: brands, buyers and sourcing agents who inspect finished goods, and factories that want to know what a buyer will check.
5. Manage inventory and margins
Merchandising Metrics Calculator
Calculate sell-through, weeks of supply, reorder points, inventory turns, GMROI, markdown impact, margin and markup. It is meant for the buying and inventory decisions that decide whether a season is profitable.
Helpful for: buyers, merchandisers and store owners.
How the tools fit together
The tools are designed to work as a sequence. Cost a style with the Garment Cost Sheet, send the totals to the Landed Cost Calculator, build your specs with the grading and conversion tools, split your order, plan the timeline, load the container, and inspect the goods before they ship. When you are ready to find the factory itself, browse our clothing factory directory.
A note on accuracy
These tools are designed for planning and general guidance. Results are estimates based on the information you enter and on commonly published conventions, and real costs, dates, measurements and sizes can differ. Please confirm important figures with your suppliers, factories, freight forwarders, customs brokers or other qualified professionals. See our Legal page for terms of use.
Tell us what to build next
We are adding new tools regularly. If there is a calculation or planning problem that slows down your business, we would like to hear about it. Contact us with your idea, and explore everything we have built so far on our tools page.
