How to choose a suit manufacturer in Egypt

Choose a suit manufacturer in Egypt by what it can build, how small an order it accepts, how quickly it samples and delivers, where its cloth comes from and what it checks before a garment leaves the floor. Ask for each answer in writing, and see a sample made to your own specification before you commit to production. Below are the questions we would put to any factory, each answered for our own, Hajjo Apparel and Manufacturing.

What does the factory actually make?

Start with the garment list, then ask for the list of things the factory does not make. A factory that makes tailoring well rarely makes everything, and a clear refusal tells you as much as a long catalogue.

Hajjo Apparel makes suits, blazers, coats, formal trousers, linen trousers, tuxedos, overshirts with buttons or zips, and matching sets of overshirt and trouser. Kids suits for ages six to fourteen follow the same rules as the rest of the range. It makes no knitwear, no denim and no casual outerwear.

Ask, too, how far a design can be changed. At Hajjo Apparel, buttons, adjusters and every other detail can be changed, sampled and tested to your tech pack.

Which jacket constructions can it build?

A tailored jacket is fused, half canvas or full canvas, and the construction decides how it wears, how it ages and where it sits on price. Ask which of the three the factory builds, in which plant, and what goes inside each one: which interlining, which chest piece, which lining.

Hajjo Apparel builds all three, but not in both plants. Homs builds fused, half canvas and full canvas; Obour City in Cairo builds fused. The fused jacket takes a woven fusible with a poly or viscose lining, half canvas a horsehair chest with a viscose lining, and full canvas a full canvas with a hand set shoulder. Most volume runs at half canvas. The differences, and what each means for your range, are set out in Fused, half canvas or full canvas: how a suit jacket is built.

What is the minimum order?

The minimum order quantity tells you whether a factory is built for your volume. Ask whether it is counted per design, per colour or per order, and how the sizes are spread within it.

Hajjo Apparel makes in your own label from 200 pieces a design. If your order is smaller, the Group has two other routes: a full series from the Bolmandi collection, or cloth by the metre from Nile Wool. What minimum order quantity means for a suit order explains all three.

How long do sampling and production take?

Two numbers matter: the time to a first sample, and the time from an approved sample to finished goods. Ask for both, and ask what the second one depends on.

At Hajjo Apparel a sample follows within three weeks. Production takes one to three months, depending on the capacity free when the order is placed. Free capacity across the two plants is 5,000 suits a month, or about 7,000 blazers as the equivalent.

Where does the cloth come from?

A factory that can source cloth saves you a supplier and a shipment. Ask which mills it buys from, whether it holds stock or orders to your quantity, and how it checks shade before cutting.

Hajjo Apparel has access to every cloth its sister company Nile Wool carries, and more besides. Nile Wool is the exclusive distributor for Drago in Africa and the exclusive agent for Stylbiella, Drapers and Lanitex, and carries Vitale Barberis Canonico, Zegna, Albini, Lanificio Cerruti, Scabal, Piacenza and Huddersfield Fine Worsteds, alongside Turkish, Indian and Chinese mills. At the factory, every cloth is checked for shade before it is cut.

What is checked, and when?

A final inspection finds faults after they are made. A check at each step finds them while they can still be put right cheaply. Ask for the check at every stage, not only the last.

At Hajjo Apparel the pattern is checked against the tech pack, the cloth is checked for shade, the fusing is tested on every batch, seams are checked at each operation, the shape is checked on the form, and every garment is measured before packing. The six steps are described one by one in From tech pack to delivery: how a private label suit order runs.

What machines are on the floor?

Machinery does not make a good suit on its own, but it shows what a factory has chosen to invest in. Sleeve setting, buttonholes, front edges and pressing are the operations that show most in a finished jacket, so ask which machine does each one.

On the floor at Obour: Dürkopp Adler sleeve setting, sleeve support, welt pocket and eyelet buttonhole machines, an AMF Reece eyelet buttonholer and a Pfaff front edge machine; a Veit Fuse Master continuous fusing press and Rotondi Cavadore sleeve presses; Juki lockstitch lines; and a plotter and digitizer in the cutting room.

Who has it made for?

A client list shows the standard a factory has been held to over time. Ask which names may be quoted and what kind of garment was made for each.

Contract tailoring has been the work since the beginning. Mohamad Hajjo opened the first workshop in Homs in 1960, the first garment manufacturer in the city, cutting and making to another house’s pattern under another house’s name. Garments have since been made for Corneliani, Kenzo Homme, Loris Azzaro, United Colors of Benetton, Pellini and Naga Homme, among others, and for the Group’s own stores, Hajjo 1991.

How large is it, and where?

Size matters less than whether your order is large enough to matter to the factory and small enough to fit. Ask where your garments will be made, and whether every plant works to the same specification.

Hajjo Apparel works from two plants to the same specification. Obour City in Cairo opened in 2022 and has 5,000 m² of floor space. Homs, in Syria, reopened in 2020 and has 13,500 m². The Group employs 1,000 people.

What will it need from you?

A factory can only quote and sample from a clear brief, and the brief it asks for shows how it works. Hajjo Apparel asks for a tech pack with measurements, size chart, cloth, construction, quantities per size, labels and a delivery date. If you have no pattern, the factory takes yours or helps you make one. Orders are invoiced in Egyptian pounds, euros or dollars.

The checklist, answered

Hajjo Apparel and Manufacturing

Start an inquiry

If the answers fit your range, send your tech pack, quantities per design and target delivery date through the inquiry form on the Hajjo Apparel page, or write to [email protected].

Send an inquiry[email protected]