Find a Portuguese Clothing Manufacturer Without an Agent | NovaSupplier
How to Find a Portuguese Clothing Manufacturer Without an Agent
Matias Santos, Founder·
Every week, brand founders email Portuguese factories and hear nothing back. They find a list of names online, write a polite introduction, describe what they're making, and wait. Nothing. They try another factory. Nothing. A third sends a one-line reply: "Please send more information." They conclude that Portuguese factories are hard to work with, or that they need an agent to access them. Neither is true. The problem is the approach, not the market. This is a step-by-step guide to finding and working with Portuguese manufacturers directly, without paying an agent 15% to do something you can do yourself.
Why most outreach fails before it starts
Portuguese factories, particularly the good ones, are not searching for new clients. They are managing existing ones.
A knitwear factory in Barcelos with 80 employees and 15 active brand relationships does not need your email. They have more production demand than they have capacity. Their commercial director receives 20 cold enquiries per week from brands they've never heard of, asking for prices on garments they've described in three sentences.
The factory's calculation is simple: responding to that email means spending an hour gathering information, asking questions, waiting for replies, and then quoting a price that may go nowhere. Against the order they're already producing for a brand they know, that email loses every time.
This is not about gatekeeping. It is about rational resource allocation. Understanding this changes everything about how you approach the outreach.
The factories that respond quickly to cold enquiries are usually not the factories you want. The ones worth working with are quiet because they're busy.
What agents actually do, and what they charge
Before explaining the direct route, it's worth being honest about what agents offer. They are not pointless. They exist because they solve a real problem.
An agent has factory relationships. When a brand approaches them, they route the brief to factories they already know will respond, because the agent has history with them. The factory takes the enquiry seriously because the agent has brought them business before. The brand gets a response in days instead of weeks.
In exchange, the agent charges a commission, typically 10–20% on top of the FOB price, that the factory builds into the quote. You never see this line item. You see a price that includes it. The factory's loyalty is to the agent who brings them recurring business. Yours is not the primary relationship.
The second thing agents control is information. You do not speak directly to the factory. You do not know what the factory actually quoted. You do not know whether a quality problem was handled or hidden. When your production run ends, you have no direct relationship with the factory. If you move to a new agent, you start from zero.
Going direct means paying the actual price and owning the relationship permanently. That is the trade.
Step 1: Clarify what you need before you search for anything
The most common mistake is searching for factories before knowing what to ask them.
Before you open a browser, you should be able to answer these seven questions:
What exactly am I making? (Category, construction type, fabric)
CMT or Full Package? (Do I source fabric, or does the factory?)
How many units per style, per colourway?
What is my target delivery date?
What certifications do I require? (OEKO-TEX, GOTS, GRS, or none)
What is my target FOB price range?
What does my brand look like, and who buys it?
A factory that receives a brief answering all seven questions will respond. A factory that receives a brief answering two of them will not.
This preparation also prevents a more expensive mistake: approaching a factory category that structurally cannot serve your brief. Seamless knit specialists cannot take a 60-unit order. Structured tailoring factories cannot quote a jersey T-shirt. The right factory for your product is a narrower category than "Portuguese clothing manufacturer," and clarifying your brief first tells you which category you're looking for.
Step 2: Where to find real factory names
There are four sources worth using. Everything else is noise.
The ATP directory. The Associação Têxtil e Vestuário de Portugal is the industry association representing Portuguese clothing and textile manufacturers. Their directory lists hundreds of registered factories with category, region, and contact information. It is unglamorous and it works. Filter by product category and region, identify 20 names, and build your list.
Modtissimo. Portugal's primary fabric and manufacturing trade show runs twice a year in Porto. The exhibitor list is publicly available and includes contact information. Factories that exhibit are specifically seeking new brand relationships, they are not the passive factories that ignore cold email. This is a pre-qualified list of factories actively open to enquiries.
LinkedIn. Search for "commercial director" or "export manager" at Portuguese clothing manufacturers. These are the decision-makers for new brand enquiries, not the generic info@ address. A LinkedIn message to the right person at a factory lands differently than an email to an inbox nobody monitors.
Platforms with pre-vetted profiles. NovaSupplier lists Portuguese factories with verified capability data, MOQs, lead times, certifications, product categories, so you can assess fit before reaching out. The difference from a directory is that factory profiles include the information you'd otherwise have to ask for in a first email, which means your first contact can be a specific brief rather than a general introduction.
What does not work: generic "top 10 Portuguese manufacturers" articles. Most are written by sourcing agencies to generate enquiries for themselves, or by content farms optimising for traffic. The factories listed are real but the information is outdated, the email addresses are wrong, and nobody is expecting your message.
Step 3: How to qualify a factory before reaching out
Sending a brief to the wrong factory wastes both sides' time. Spend 20 minutes on qualification before writing a single word of outreach.
Check their website for product evidence. A factory that claims to make knitwear but shows no knitwear photography, no fabric details, and no technical language on their website probably does not specialise in knitwear. Look for specificity. A factory that describes its machinery, its certifications, and its typical client profile in detail is a factory that knows what it does.
Check their certifications. If OEKO-TEX is a hard requirement, verify the factory holds it before outreach. The OEKO-TEX database is publicly searchable at . Same for GOTS at .
Check their geography. Portuguese clothing manufacturing is concentrated in specific clusters. Knitwear and jersey: Guimarães, Barcelos, Braga, Famalicão. Woven and denim: Covilhã, Castelo Branco. Technical and performance: scattered across the north. A factory based in Lisbon claiming to specialise in Barcelos-cluster knitwear is worth a closer look.
Understand their scale. A factory with 15 employees cannot take a 500-unit order from a brand they've never worked with. A factory with 200 employees is unlikely to prioritise a 60-unit first order. Your volume should be in the range the factory normally works in.
Step 4: The outreach that actually gets a response
This is where most brand founders lose the deal before it starts.
The email that works is not a long introduction to your brand. It is a brief that contains everything the factory needs to decide whether to quote you.
What to include:
One sentence about your brand (what you make, who buys it)
The specific product you're enquiring about
Construction type (CMT or FPP)
Volume (units per style and per colourway)
Target delivery date
Target FOB price or budget range
A tech pack or detailed sketch attached
What to leave out:
Your brand story and founding vision
Questions about price before giving them any of the above
Multiple products in one email (start with your most important style)
Any mention of other factories you're also approaching
On sharing your budget: yes, share it. Brands resist this instinctively, worried the factory will price to their ceiling. The reality is the opposite. A factory that can't hit your range will tell you, saving weeks of back and forth. A factory that can will quote within it or propose an honest alternative. The factories worth working with are not playing ceiling games. They have enough business.
The subject line: be specific. "FPP knitwear enquiry, 200 units, Q3 delivery" will be opened. "Partnership opportunity" will not.
Step 5: What happens in the first call
If your brief is good, a factory will respond with either a quote or a request for a call. The call is the real start of the relationship.
Three things to do in that call:
Establish that you know what you're talking about. Ask specific questions about construction. Ask about fabric sourcing. Ask about their minimum per colourway, not just per style. Factories receive many calls from brands that have never made anything before and are not ready to produce. Demonstrating that you understand the process signals that you are a brand worth developing a relationship with.
Ask about their current capacity. A good factory will be honest about whether they have production slots in your window. If they're fully booked until Q1, that is useful information. Don't try to rush a factory with no capacity. Ask when they'd have space and schedule accordingly.
Ask who you'll be working with. The commercial director you speak to today may hand you to a project manager tomorrow. Understanding who manages the brief from quote to production, and how communication works during production, tells you a lot about how organised the factory is.
Step 6: How to read a quote
A quote from a Portuguese factory will typically include a unit price, a setup or sampling fee, a production minimum, a payment structure, and a lead time. Here is what to pay attention to:
Setup fee: a one-time cost covering pattern making, first sample, and machine setup. This is legitimate and standard. It is not negotiable in most cases because it reflects real work. Expect €200–600 per style for cut and sew, higher for knitwear or seamless.
Payment structure: most Portuguese factories ask for 30–50% deposit before production begins, with the balance on delivery or before shipment. First-order terms are rarely flexible on this. It improves with relationship and track record.
Lead time from what point: confirm whether the quoted lead time starts from deposit, from sample approval, or from first contact. These produce wildly different actual delivery dates. "8 weeks" from deposit when sample approval takes 4 weeks first is 12 weeks minimum.
What's included in the price: FPP quotes should include fabric, all trims, labels, and finishing. Confirm. A quote that looks like FPP but excludes labels and hangtags is not a complete quote.
Red flags
These are not dealbreakers on their own. They are reasons to ask a direct question before proceeding.
No physical address or clear location on their website
Reluctance to share factory photos or recent production samples
Quote delivered with no setup fee (either very unusual or a quote that excludes it and will add it later)
Lead time quoted under 4 weeks for a first-time order including sampling
Refusal to communicate directly and only through an intermediary "assistant"
Price significantly below every other quote you've received (find out why before celebrating)
The honest reality about going direct
Going direct is more work than hiring an agent, particularly on the first order. There is no one between you and the factory to absorb the back and forth, translate the miscommunications, or manage the sample revision process.
What you gain is permanent.
The factory knows you. You know the factory. You know the price. You know the margin. You know the contact, the capacity, the process. When you place your second order, your third, your fifth, you are building on a relationship that belongs to you and to no one else.
The first order is the hardest. Every one after it is easier.
The short version
Find factory names through ATP, Modtissimo, LinkedIn, or a platform with pre-vetted profiles. Qualify on product category, certification, and scale before reaching out. Write a brief that includes construction type, volume, delivery date, and target price. Share your budget. Ask for a call. On the call, demonstrate you know the process. Read the quote carefully, especially lead time start points and what's included.
That is the whole process. It is not complicated. It requires preparation that most brands skip.
The brands that produce in Portugal without an agent are not the ones with the most connections. They are the ones who sent a better brief.
NovaSupplier connects independent fashion brands directly with vetted Portuguese manufacturers. Brief, match, quote, sample, order, in one platform. No agent between you and the factory.