Lead times, counted honestly
How long does it take to make a suit?
The short answer is that alterations at a local shop take a few days to two weeks, made to measure takes a few weeks, and bespoke takes months. The useful answer is the part underneath. Our own production runs 14 to 20 working days, and working days are not calendar days. Twenty working days is four weeks on a calendar before anything has shipped, and people who read it as twenty days are the people who are disappointed on day twenty-one. The second thing worth knowing is that the production window is not the delivery date. If you are quoting a date to somebody else, you are quoting production plus cloth availability plus freight plus customs plus whatever alteration happens at your end, and only one of those is inside our building.
What each route actually takes
| Alterations | Made to measure | Bespoke | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical elapsed time | Two days to two weeks, depending on the shop's queue rather than the work. | Roughly three to five weeks door to door, of which the making is 14 to 20 working days. | Two to six months, because the time is in the fittings and the waiting between them. |
| What is actually happening | A seam is moved. The work itself is often under an hour and the wait is the queue in front of it. | A pattern is adjusted from a block, the cloth is cut, and the garment is made once. No fitting stage. | A pattern is drafted from scratch, then a basted garment is fitted, taken apart and remade, usually twice. |
| What makes it slip | Wedding season. Every shop is full at the same time, and the queue triples without the work changing. | Cloth. If a mill is out of the bunch you chose, the clock does not start until a substitute is agreed. | The fittings, and specifically getting the customer back in the room for the second one. |
| What you should quote a customer | What the shop told you, plus two days. They are quoting a queue, and queues move. | Production plus freight plus customs plus a buffer. Never the production window alone. | A season, not a date. Bespoke that is rushed stops being bespoke and becomes an expensive fitting. |
| When to say no | Rarely. This is the route that exists for short notice. | When the date is under three weeks away. Buy off the rack and alter it, and we would rather tell you that. | When there is an immovable date at all. It is the wrong route for a deadline. |
The row that costs people money is the fourth one. Every other row is information. That one is a promise somebody makes to a customer, and it is the only one where being wrong has a name attached to it.
The words that hide the time
Most lead-time disputes are not disagreements about speed. They are two people using the same word for different spans.
- Working days
- Business days, excluding weekends and public holidays. Fourteen to twenty working days is roughly three to four calendar weeks. This is the single most common misreading of any lead time, and it is worth converting to a calendar date in writing before anyone agrees to anything, because the two numbers differ by about a third.
- Production window
- The span from a confirmed order to a finished garment leaving the workshop. It excludes the time spent agreeing the order, the freight, the customs clearance, and anything that happens after arrival. It is the only part a factory can state accurately, which is exactly why it should not be handed to a customer as a delivery date.
- Confirmed order
- The moment the clock starts. An order is confirmed when the cloth, the measurements, the options and the payment terms are all settled. A message saying go ahead while the cloth is still undecided does not start it, and the days spent waiting on that decision are days nobody is counting but everybody remembers later.
- Cloth availability
- Whether the piece you chose is actually in stock at the mill. Most cloth is not held by anybody in quantity, so a bunch that was available in the sample book two months ago may need a substitute. This is the most common cause of a lead time moving, and it moves it at the start rather than the end.
- Rush production
- A shortened window bought deliberately. Worth understanding for what it is: it buys a fixed date, not lost time. If an order has already slipped a fortnight, paying for rush does not recover the fortnight, it only compresses what remains. It is a tool for a date that cannot move, not a remedy for having ordered late.
- Transit and clearance
- The part of the calendar nobody plans. Air freight is days and sea freight is weeks, and customs clearance is unpredictable in a way that averages well and fails badly. Build the buffer here rather than assuming the making will finish early, because the making is the part that runs to schedule.
- Fitting
- A stage that exists in bespoke and not in made to measure. This is the whole reason the two routes differ by months rather than days. A made-to-measure garment is made once from adjusted measurements; a bespoke one is made, worn, marked, taken apart and made again.
The lead-time questions we actually get
How long does it take to make a custom suit?
For made to measure, the making itself is 14 to 20 working days from a confirmed order, which is three to four calendar weeks. Door to door, with cloth confirmation at the front and freight at the back, three to five weeks is a realistic total to somewhere in Europe. Bespoke is a different order of magnitude, two to six months, because the time sits in the fittings rather than in the sewing.
How long does it take to get a suit tailored?
Alterations at a local shop are usually two days to two weeks. What varies is not the work, which is often under an hour, but the queue in front of it. In the run-up to wedding and graduation season the same shop doing the same job can quote three times its usual turnaround, so ask for a date rather than a duration, and ask in April what you would have asked in January.
Why is it counted in working days?
Because that is what a workshop can actually commit to. It also means the number is smaller than the wait: twenty working days is about four weeks on a calendar. Almost every lead-time argument we have seen started with one side reading working days as calendar days. Convert it to a date, put the date in the message, and the argument does not happen.
Can you make it faster?
Rush production exists and it is real, but it is worth being precise about what it buys. It buys a fixed date that cannot move. It does not recover time already lost. If an order has drifted three weeks because the cloth was never confirmed, paying to compress the remaining work does not give the three weeks back, and it puts the whole schedule on a garment that now has no slack in it if anything needs redoing.
My customer needs it in three weeks. What do I do?
Do not order made to measure. We would rather say that than take the order and have you explain a late delivery to somebody standing in a suit shop. Three weeks does not survive one cloth substitution or one customs hold. Sell an off-the-rack garment and put it through a good local alterations shop, which is exactly the route that exists for short notice, and keep the made-to-measure order for the customer who is not counting days.
What date should I give my customer?
Not ours. Take the production window, add cloth confirmation at the front, add freight and clearance at the back, add whatever alteration you do on arrival, then add a buffer. Then quote that. You are the one whose name is on the promise, and the only number we can be accurate about is the part that happens inside our building. A shop that quotes the factory window as a delivery date has taken on a risk it cannot see.
What most often makes an order late?
Cloth, and it happens at the beginning rather than the end. A piece that appeared in a sample book is not necessarily held anywhere in quantity, and if a substitute has to be agreed, the days spent agreeing it are days before the clock starts. The second cause is a confirmed order that was never actually confirmed, where measurements or options were still open while both sides assumed production had begun.
Does a fitting stage add time?
It is the time. Made to measure has no fitting stage, which is the entire reason it runs in weeks rather than months. Bespoke is made, worn, marked, unpicked and remade, usually more than once, and the slowest part is rarely the workshop. It is the calendar gap between a customer being told to come back and the customer coming back.
Ask for a date, not a duration
Tell us the date your customer needs it and we will tell you plainly whether it is possible, including when the answer is that it is not. That answer is more useful to you than an optimistic one.