Design Masters
A master in GarmentFlow is the reference data that everything else depends on. Brand. Fit. Fabric. Color. Size chart. The kind of data you enter once and reuse across hundreds of Tech Packs.
Masters are the work that pays off latest and pays off most. A factory with tidy masters has reports that work, dropdowns with the right options, and designers who can build a Tech Pack in twenty minutes instead of two hours. A factory with sloppy masters has three records for the same fabric, six spellings of the same color, and reports that don't add up because the data is fragmented across near-duplicates.
The design team owns most of this data. Spend the time.
Who owns what
Most factories assign each master to a clear owner:
- The design lead owns Brand, Division, Fit, Type, Fabric, Composition, Variant, Size Chart, Point of Measurement.
- The QC lead owns Washcare Symbol and Material Certification.
- The commercial team owns customer-facing brand identity (logo, address) on the Brand record.
You don't have to formalize this on day one, but you do need somebody to be responsible for each master being correct and current. Otherwise everyone edits and no one owns.
The masters in this section
The pages below walk through each master, what it's for, and the fields you actually need to think about when you create one.
- Brand — the brand identity, plus its label designs, default raw materials, and measurement defaults.
- Divisions, Fits, and Types — the small lookups that classify every Tech Pack.
- Fabrics and composition — the fabric library, the fibre mix, and material certifications.
- Size charts and points of measurement — the size scales and the named measurement points.
- Washcare symbols — the standard care symbols that print on labels.
Color (the Variant master, color library, and Denim Shades) lives alongside the Tech Pack — see Colors and the color library.
A note on growing a library
The trap with masters is creating a new record every time you can't immediately find the one you want. The discipline is the opposite: before you create a new master, search hard for the existing one. Frappe's awesome bar can find a fabric by partial name; the master lists have filters; almost everything you think is new is already there.
Get into the habit, and your library stays clean. Skip it, and within a year you'll have eight versions of "100% Cotton" and your costing won't roll up correctly.
What to do next
Pick the master you most need to set up first and start there. Most factories begin with Brands, then Size Charts (because Patterns and Tech Packs depend on them), then Fabrics as styles come in.