What does CMT mean?
Cut, Make, Trim (CMT) is the most common method of production that occurs in textile and clothing factories.
CMT has three stages that the manufacturers go through to provide brands or customers with a final product.
Generally, a brand will being a design to a company to Cut, Make and Trim the design and in other scenarios the factory will have already provided this service allowing the fashion brand to white-label the pre-produced product.
Stage 1: Cut
The cut stage of this process is the most time consuming stage and can be done by hand or with more sophisticated machines. Precision cutting is needed in order to match the design and reduce wastage of material.
Larger orders utilize tessellated patterns in order to maximize fabric usage and reduce offcuts and wastage. The cut stage effectively creates each piece ready to be sewn.
Stage 2: Make
The second stage, make, is where the pieces of cut material are put together in order to make the design. This is often done by machines or hand-made in factories depending on the size and scale of operation.
Stage 3: Trim
The trim stage is where any excess material and quality control occurs. The trim stage is done mostly by people with quality control an important aspect of the production process.