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ATMA Apparel & Textile Merchandising Academy
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T01

The Apparel & Textile Business

The Apparel & Textile Business: 10 courses and 50 lessons on ATMA. Every lesson is free to read, with an Excel template for each course.

T01-C01 The Apparel & Textile Business

  1. From fibre to customer: the chain of companies that makes one T-shirt
  2. Who owns the product at each point in the chain?
  3. How a price is built: from the factory's cost to the shop shelf
  4. Who carries the risk when things go wrong: late shipment, quality rejection and cancellation
  5. How the timeline is planned: building and reading a domestic restocking timeline

T01-C02 Companies in the Industry

  1. The main types of companies in the apparel and textile industry
  2. How a vertically integrated group differs from independent companies at each stage
  3. Buying offices, sourcing offices and agents: who they work for and how they are paid
  4. Textile mills: spinning, knitting, weaving, dyeing and finishing as separate or combined businesses
  5. How to identify which company you are dealing with from a purchase order or a company name

T01-C03 How Apparel Businesses Sell

  1. The main ways an apparel business reaches its customer
  2. Private label vs own brand: who owns the design and who carries the unsold stock
  3. Wholesale vs direct retail: how the same product reaches two different price points
  4. E-commerce and physical retail: what changes in ordering, sizing and returns
  5. Choosing a selling model: a decision exercise built around Cedar & Co.

T01-C04 Make to Order and Make to Stock

  1. Make to Order and Make to Stock: the two ways a factory plans production
  2. How Make to Order changes lead time, risk and cash flow compared with Make to Stock
  3. How MTS changes forecasting, warehousing and markdown risk compared with MTO
  4. Hybrid models: when a company runs Make to Order and Make to Stock lines together
  5. Reading an order or a company's model to tell MTO from MTS

T01-C05 How an Apparel Order Works

  1. The life of an order: the stages every apparel order passes through, from first enquiry to shipment
  2. Sampling stages: proto, fit and sales samples, and what each one proves
  3. Order confirmation: what a purchase order must contain before production starts
  4. Production tracking: the checkpoints a merchandiser follows during making
  5. Shipment and closing an order: documents, inspection and hand-over

T01-C06 How a Collection Works

  1. What a collection is and how it differs from a single order
  2. The seasonal calendar: how far ahead a collection is planned before it reaches the shop
  3. Range planning: balancing categories, price points and colours across a collection
  4. Buying and open-to-buy: how a retailer decides how much of a collection to commit to
  5. From collection plan to individual purchase orders: why a range plan is not itself an order

T01-C07 Money in the Apparel Business

  1. How the price of a garment is built from fabric to margin, stage by stage
  2. Costing a garment: fabric, trims, making charge, overhead and profit
  3. Margin and markup: the difference, and how each is calculated
  4. Payment terms and cash flow: how and when money moves between buyer and factory
  5. Where profit is made and lost across the value chain: a worked comparison

T01-C08 Jobs and Departments

  1. The main departments in a garment factory and what each one does
  2. The main departments inside a buying company or brand, and what each one does
  3. Merchandising: the department that connects the factory and the buyer
  4. Quality, compliance and sustainability: three separate questions across the chain
  5. Career paths: how people move between these jobs and departments

T01-C09 Systems and Information

  1. Why information about an order must move as reliably as the goods themselves
  2. The core systems used in the industry: ERP, PLM and what each is for
  3. How a purchase order, a tech pack and a costing sheet connect to each other
  4. Common information failures: wrong data, late updates and version confusion
  5. Keeping your own order information reliable without relying on a system

T01-C10 The Industry Today

  1. The size and shape of the global apparel and textile industry today
  2. Where the industry's factories, mills and buyers are concentrated, and why
  3. Sustainability and compliance pressures reshaping the industry
  4. Technology changes: how it affects sourcing, production and retail differently
  5. What this means for someone starting a career in the industry now

Every lesson is free to read.

Start with the first lesson Course map

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