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 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 image 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 and finishing, all without electricity
- One artisan per garment, first stitch to last, for full traceability
- We check 39 measurements on every finished garment before sending it to the customer
From image to dispatched garment.
Design review
We read your image or sketch 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 check the tension/gauge before she starts on the garment.
Knit, finish, dispatch
One artisan knits the garment from first stitch to last. It is hand-joined 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. KOCO provides every knitter with a detailed written pattern, often running to 50 pages or more for each size. In conventional hand-knit production, individual knitters are generally not given written patterns.
- 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 and finishing. Zero electricity in production.
- Traceability
- Every garment is made by a single artisan from first stitch to last.
- Workforce
- Hundreds of women artisans, trained in literacy and basic maths, 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.
“KOCO proves that hand-knitted production at commercial standard is entirely achievable without compromise on lead times, finishing or ethical credentials.”
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. We check 39 measurements on every finished garment before sending it to the customer.
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 image or sketch we return an indicative costing and a realistic lead time together.
Every garment is knitted from first stitch to last by a single artisan, with no hand-off. That structure is how traceability is built into the work.
Send us your sketch.
An image or sketch is all we need to start. We will come back with feasibility, indicative costing and lead times for your hand-knit project.