Hand-knitted garment manufacturing for fashion brands.
Commercial production from a single piece to 1000 or more, with one artisan per garment and no machines at any stage.
Machine-knitting minimums keep small and mid runs off the table.
Most knitwear production is built around machine setup. The economics only work once a run clears a minimum that can sit in the hundreds, which rules out capsule drops, runway showpieces and the test-and-learn quantities a design team actually wants to order.
KOCO exists for the runs that fall below that line, and for the runs above it where a house wants a genuinely hand-knitted result rather than a machine facsimile. Because no machine is set up, there is no setup cost to recover, and the same process handles one piece or a thousand.
- No minimum order quantity, from a single piece to 1000 or more
- No machine setup, so no setup cost recovered through volume
- One named artisan knits each garment from first stitch to last
- Written patterns, one per size, with no abbreviations
What a production run includes.
- Translation of your tech pack or sketch into a written pattern, one per size
- An individual tension swatch knitted by each artisan before she begins
- Hand knitting on bamboo and timber needles, with no machines at any stage
- Hand joining, finishing, blocking and washing, all without electricity
- A swing tag on every garment identifying the artisan who made it
- A four-phase quality check before dispatch
From tech pack to dispatched garment.
Tech pack review
We read your tech pack against stitch complexity, yarn behaviour and artisan hours, and return feasibility with an indicative costing.
Pattern writing
Our pattern writers produce a written pattern for each size, with no abbreviations, running to fifty pages or more for a single size.
Tension swatching
Each artisan knits an individual tension swatch to match the gauge before she starts on the garment.
Knit, finish, dispatch
One artisan knits the garment from first stitch to last. It is hand-joined, blocked, washed, tagged and checked before dispatch.
How the production is specified.
- Minimum order
- None. Production scales from a single piece to 1000 or more.
- Pattern format
- Written, one per size, no abbreviations. Fifty pages or more for a single size against an industry norm of four to five.
- Needles
- Bamboo and timber only. No machine knitting at any stage.
- Tension
- An individual tension swatch is knitted by each artisan before every garment.
- Joining and finishing
- Hand joining, finishing, blocking and washing. Zero electricity in production.
- Traceability
- Every garment carries a swing tag identifying the named artisan who made it.
- Workforce
- Hundreds of women artisans trained through a seven-month paid apprenticeship, working from centralised village hubs.
Related production.
Runway showpieces featuring custom long-fringe hand-knits, knitted stitch by stitch.
Intricate Merino cable knit jumpers setting a global benchmark for hand-knit quality.
Ethical hand-knit production combining artisanal texture with commercial consistency.
[TESTIMONIAL REQUIRED]
A short quote from a sourcing or production lead at an approved named client, evidencing consistency across a commercial run. Subject to written permission.
What sourcing directors ask us.
Yes. Production scales from a single piece to 1000 or more through the same process. There is no machine setup, so there is no minimum the run has to clear.
Each artisan knits an individual tension swatch before starting and works from a written pattern specific to that size. A four-phase check is completed before dispatch.
Both. We can source yarn, including custom spinning and dyeing, or knit from yarn you supply. See our yarn sourcing service for detail.
Lead time depends on stitch complexity, garment count and yarn availability. After we assess your tech pack we return an indicative costing and a realistic lead time together.
Every garment carries a swing tag naming the artisan who knitted it from first stitch to last.
Send us your tech pack.
We will come back with feasibility, indicative costing and lead times for your hand-knit project.