Made in Tirupur: how every OffScript tee passes through India's textile capital

Every OffScript tee is cut, stitched, dyed, and printed in Tirupur — the small Tamil Nadu town that exports around 60% of India's knitwear and quietly clothes a huge chunk of the world's fast-fashion racks. If you've ever worn a cotton tee with a "Made in India" tag, there's a fair chance the fabric came out of a Tirupur mill.

Why Tirupur

Three reasons we don't print anywhere else:

• Vertical supply chain. Yarn, knitting, dyeing, cutting, stitching, printing, packing — every step happens within a 15 km radius. A defect caught at one stage doesn't have to travel three states to be reworked.
• Knit-cotton expertise. Tirupur mills have been spinning combed cotton since the 80s. The 180 GSM single-jersey and 240 GSM heavyweight cotton we use isn't generic — it's a specific weave + GSM combination that survives 50+ wash cycles without losing its shape.
• Made-to-order capable. Most Indian apparel hubs are tooled for 10,000-piece bulk orders. Tirupur printers will run a single tee through DTF when we need a sample. That's how we keep zero inventory and still ship in 4 to 7 days.

The quality test every drop has to pass

A design doesn't go on the website the day we draw it. Before any drop goes live, we print a test batch of three — one in the lightest base colour, one in black, one in the heaviest-print variant. Each one goes through:

• GSM check. We weigh a 10×10 cm swatch — the fabric has to come in at the spec we ordered. A 240 GSM tee that lands at 215 gets rejected.
• Wash test, 5 cycles. Machine wash cold, tumble dry low. We compare the printed graphic before and after — looking for cracking, peeling, edge lift, or any colour shift. Anything visible at arm's-length fails.
• Fit check. Sample worn by three different body types — we measure shoulder, chest, length, and sleeve drop against the published size chart. ±1 cm is the tolerance. More than that and the size grade is reworked.
• Print colour reference. The printed graphic is held against the digital spec under daylight and warm indoor light. If the orange in your design comes out brick-red in either, we re-mix the ink.

Only after that — the drop goes live

If any of those checks fail, the design doesn't get a product page. We either fix the underlying issue (different base fabric, ink change, size regrade) or kill the design entirely. We've shelved eight designs in the last three months that didn't survive the wash test.

It's the boring middle step we don't usually talk about. But it's the reason that when you order an OffScript tee, you're not gambling on a first run. You're getting the fourth version of a print that already proved it lasts.

Why we're transparent about this

Most D2C labels in India still print "designed in Bombay" and hide where the garment actually comes from. Tirupur isn't a glamour pin on a map — it's a working town that makes a real, durable product. We'd rather wear that on the label than pretend.

Next post: a side-by-side wash test of our 240 GSM tee versus what Myntra calls "heavyweight." Spoiler — the numbers don't match the marketing.