No stock diagrams. The seven stages below are the same stages every pair passes through on the Jiangxi lines that build 20 million pairs a year — and knowing them is what separates a smooth first order from an expensive one.
Capacity figures refer to our long-term manufacturing partner's Jiangxi campus, where the process below runs.
Most quality problems buyers meet later are actually decided in the first two stages — which is exactly why they get their own section here.
Every shoe starts as a tech pack: the drawing, the materials, the colours, the stitch pattern, the outsole spec and the size grading, all in one controlled document. The workshops never improvise — they build exactly what the tech pack says. If the tech pack is vague, the sample will be too, and the ambiguity gets more expensive at every stage after.
Next comes the last — the plastic foot shape the shoe is built around. Two shoes with identical materials can fit completely differently if their lasts differ. Last selection and grading are confirmed before a single panel is cut, because a fit problem discovered at sampling costs a week and one discovered after bulk costs a season.
Materials are then sourced against the spec and checked into the materials warehouse. Read the detail in the shoe materials guide for buyers.
The brief becomes a controlled document: materials, colours, stitch patterns, outsole spec, size grading. Every downstream workshop builds exactly what it says — so the pack is where quality is won or lost first.
The last fixes fit before any panel is cut. Upper materials, linings, midsole foam and outsole rubber are sourced against the spec and checked into the warehouse.
Panels are cut from leather, synthetic or knit sheet. Automated cutters nest the pattern pieces to minimise waste, and each size run gets its own die or digital cut file from the tech pack.
Cut panels are sewn into a finished upper — overlays, logos, eyestays, collar padding. A running shoe upper can carry dozens of stitch operations before it ever sees a sole.
The upper is pulled over the last and bonded to midsole and outsole: cementing, pressing, chilling, de-lasting. This is the moment a shoe takes its final shape.
Pairs are inspected line-side while materials and production batches go through the in-house lab — bonding strength, flex, abrasion, colour fastness — before anything is packed.
Pairs are tissue-wrapped, boxed with your branding, matched with hangtags and labels, cartoned, container-loaded and shipped under your chosen Incoterms.
The process is forgiving if you respect its sequence. These are the three places the sequence usually gets broken.
Treating the first sample as final. Fit is a conversation between your market's feet and the last — plan for one revision round, not zero.
A "small" material swap after sample approval re-opens the tech pack, re-runs lab checks and moves the production slot. Changes are free at stage one and expensive at stage five.
The production slot starts from sample approval and deposit — not from the first email. Plans built backwards from a launch date ignore this and slip.
Read next: what happens during sampling and the realistic production timeline.
Designing from zero?
Full OEM/ODM: your tech pack or ours, your tooling, every stage above built to your spec. The deepest route — and the one where the process knowledge above matters most.
OEM / ODM supplier →Have a design but no tooling budget?
Private label: build on an existing platform with your branding. You skip tooling and shorten the front of the process without skipping the checks.
Private label sneakers →Testing a market this quarter?
Ready stock: finished pairs, already built, shipped now. The process above already happened — you start at the packing stage.
See ready stock →You can see every stage above without leaving your desk: the 360° virtual tour walks the floor, the factory tour page shows the lines and the lab, and testing & certification shows what your goods must pass before a container leaves.
For the paperwork behind the floor: the campus holds ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 certification, with a SMETA 4-Pillar social-compliance audit on file (Sedex member ID ZC420027404 — verify via your Sedex account). If you are comparing suppliers, read how to verify a Chinese shoe factory first — it was written to be used against us as much as anyone else.
The upper is where most of the visible cost sits. A shoe upper factory in China will run knitting, cutting, stitching and lasting on one site — in our partner campus that is 68 stitching lines and 16 intelligent lines — which is why the upper, not the outsole, usually decides the sampling timeline.
Send the silhouette or just the market you're selling into. We come back with a route recommendation, a sampling date and one concrete number.
