Manufacturing
Two programs. Five factories. One standard.
Most programs keep their factories behind a curtain. We would rather introduce you: five specialist workshops — two in Japan, three in China — each dedicated to a single discipline.
Tailored Japan
The pinnacle of the program.
Two workshops: tailoring in Hirakata, hand in hand with Master Tailor Nobuyuki Iwashita, and shirts in Okayama.
Hirakata, Osaka · Tailored clothing
Five One Factory
Making suits in Hirakata since 1964.
Five One has made tailored clothing in Hirakata since 1964: full floating-canvas construction, around four hundred steps per garment, and kuse-tori — the hand ironwork that shapes a jacket in three dimensions. We work hand in hand with Master Tailor Nobuyuki Iwashita, one of the few tailors in Japan who can still sew an entire jacket by hand. When a fit question comes back from your shop, he is who resolves it.
Manufacturing — Okayama shirt production
Tamano, Okayama · Shirts
Do-1 — Doi Sewing Works
Shirts, and only shirts, since 1952.
Do-1 — the Doi Sewing Works — has made shirts on the Seto Inland Sea for more than seventy years: roughly eight million since 1952, every one made to order, felled seams and mother-of-pearl buttons standard. Orders arrive as Japanese-language production templates generated directly from Loom.
Master Tailor — Five One Factory
“However fine the pattern or the design, nothing takes shape without someone to sew it.”
Nobuyuki Iwashita
Iwashita-san chose the factory floor on purpose. Trained in haute couture and menswear at Osaka’s Ueda College of Fashion — three competition awards before graduating — he passed on the designer’s desk for the place where clothes are actually made. When Five One told the young applicant they couldn’t take him, he asked until they did. Twenty-three years later, he runs the floor.
He learned bespoke whole — measuring, pattern, cutting, sewing — under a senior who had studied tailoring in England for four years, and worked twelve-hour days until the craft was his. Today he is one of the few tailors in Japan who can sew an entire jacket by hand, and his cause is raising the standing of the people who sew.
Through Canvas Apparel Group, he now cuts for clients far beyond Japan. When a fit question comes back from your shop, it lands on his table.
Tailored China
The specialist network.
Three factories, each making one thing exceptionally well: tailored clothing in Tianjin, shirts in Ningbo, casual trousers in Zibo City.
Manufacturing — Tianjin handwork bench
Tianjin · Bespoke tailored clothing
Tianjin Workshop
Four construction tiers, up to genuine Full Handmade.
Tianjin has been one of China's Western-tailoring capitals for a century, and our workshop there works squarely in that tradition: tailored clothing in four tiers — Half Canvas, Full Canvas, Half Handmade, Full Handmade — up to hand-padded lapels and hand-set sleeves. "Made in China" here means a choice of construction level, not a compromise.
Manufacturing — Ningbo shirting floor
Ningbo · Shirts
Ningbo Shirting Factory
Shirtmakers in China's shirtmaking capital.
Western shirtmaking took root in China with Ningbo's "red-gang" tailors, and the city is still its shirt capital. Our partner there makes shirts and nothing else — collar construction, cuff finishing, pattern-matched plackets.
Manufacturing — Aspop denim lines, Zibo City
Zibo City, Shandong · Denim & casual pants
Aspop
Denim specialists with world-class scale.
Aspop is Shandong's largest specialized denim maker — the same lines that have produced for GAP, Banana Republic, and Lee. Their custom plant runs orders down to a single pair, which is exactly how clothiers order.
The construction ladder
“Made in China” on our label is a construction choice, not a compromise.
01
Half Canvas
A floating canvas through the chest and lapel, machine-sewn. A sharp, honest entry garment.
02
Full Canvas
Canvas through the full front, machine-sewn — better drape, longer life.
03
Half Handmade
Full canvas with the structural details done by hand: collar, lapel padding, armholes.
04
Full Handmade
Bespoke-level handwork throughout the garment — a make rarely offered through MTM programs at all.
Every tier is published. See the price list.
China Production Manager
“She is the machinery that makes Canvas Apparel Group tick.”
Greg Smith, founder — on Cher Zhang
Every order that leaves Loom for Tianjin, Ningbo, or Zibo City moves under Cher Zhang’s watch — placement, priorities, and the follow-through until it ships. Nearly twenty years in bespoke clothing means she knows every workshop, and every shortcut a garment should never take.
She is why three specialist factories run as one program — and why a fit note from your shop gets answered by the right bench, fast.
How we work with them
Direct partnerships. No intermediaries.
No trading companies, no agents. Our founder began building these relationships in 2011 through his own retail business, Smith Bespoke — and we still visit the floors. Your question goes to the workshop that made the garment.
Judge the make for yourself.
Every partnership starts with a sample garment.