Children's Knitwear: What 18 Published Styles Show About Gauge, Fibre and Cost

The programme divides into thirds

That even split is worth noticing when you are planning a first children's drop. A cardigan, a hoodie and a pullover cover the wardrobe; adding a fourth silhouette usually adds tooling and grading work before it adds sales.

Half our adult spring/summer shelf sits at 12GG fine. Children's knitwear sits at 7GG and coarser, because a child's garment is judged on warmth and durability through repeated washing rather than on drape. A fine-gauge children's sweater looks refined on a sample and disappoints after ten washes.

Our 5GG vs 7GG vs 12GG comparison sets out what each band does.

Cotton appears in 11 of the 18 styles and wool in 6. Beyond that, five styles are published on organic cotton and three on recycled fibre — a higher proportion than our adult shelf carries, which reflects where children's buyers actually push. Alpaca, cashmere and merino appear on one style each as the premium end.

Skin contact is the reason this matters more here than elsewhere. Our OEKO-TEX Standard 100 certification is the document most children's buyers ask for first.

Published index medians at MOQ 30 per colour, on the styles that carry each:

Deliberately not expressed as one range. The high is nearly four times the low, so a single figure would be useless for planning. Choose the fibre first; the number follows.

MOQ is 30 pieces per colour, sizes may be mixed within that 30, samples run about 15–25 days from a confirmed tech pack and yarn, and bulk 30–45 days. All 18 styles publish a size range of Newborn–12y.

All eighteen publish one range: Newborn to 12 years. That is a thirteen-year span in a single published line, and it is honest only because the grading is done per style rather than once for the category. A newborn body block and a 10-year block are different garments that happen to share a name — neck opening ratios, sleeve-to-body proportion and ease all move, and none of them move linearly.

In practice a first programme is graded across two or three age bands, not thirteen years. Deciding which bands you are actually selling into, before the tech pack, removes most of the sampling rounds.

Fifteen of eighteen are regular fit, three relaxed. Children's buyers increasingly ask for roomier, layer-friendly volumes and our published shelf does not show much of that.

Fifteen of eighteen are published as all-season, only three as autumn/winter. For a category where warmth is a primary purchase driver, that is thinner winter representation than the shelf should carry.

• Children's knitwear manufacturing guide — safety compliance, age bands and the sourcing process
• Maternity and baby knitwear: two size systems, one programme — where the baby sizing overlaps
• The full children's knitwear range
• Request a sample

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*Figures in this article are read from the 18 children's styles published in our own catalogue as of 11 September 2026, and from our published yarn cost index. They are reference figures, not quotations.*