Private Label Keffiyeh: Labels, Colours, Cartons

A private label order is the same scarf with your name on it, and the fastest way to lose money on one is to treat “your label” as a single decision. It is five: the label sewn into the piece, the care and fibre text that goes with it, the tag that hangs off it, the bag or box it arrives in, and the barcode your till or your warehouse reads. Each has an owner, a deadline and a way to go wrong. This is what to settle before you ask anyone for a price.

What private label means here

Nothing about the cloth changes. You are buying a run of an existing style and putting your brand on the trim, which is why private label is a few weeks of decisions rather than months of development. The weave, the size and the finish stay what the product page says they are.

A custom weave is the other thing, and it is worth saying out loud that it is not what most first orders want. A new pattern means a new draft on the loom, a setup cost that has to be spread over the run, and a minimum that reflects it. The honest first question is therefore not “can you make my design” but “which of your existing patterns can carry my brand” — the answer is usually a better use of the budget, and you can still change the label, the colour and the pack to make it yours.

1. The label sewn into the scarf

Two ways to make one, and the choice is driven by quantity more than by taste.

• Woven — the letters are threads in a jacquard label. It survives washing, feels like part of the garment, and costs more per label because the loom has to be set up for your wording.
• Printed (satin or cotton tape) — cheaper at small quantities, softer, and the print can wear before the scarf does. Fine for a test run; less so for a label a customer will read for years.

What the label maker needs from you: vector artwork (AI, EPS or a clean SVG — not a JPG), the thread colours as Pantone references rather than screen colours, the finished size, the fold type (centre fold, end fold, mitre fold) and where it sits. On a square keffiyeh the usual place is the side seam or a corner, and it should never run across the pattern: a label that interrupts a woven check is the first thing a buyer notices.

Ask for a physical label proof before the run, not a PDF. Thread colour on a screen and thread colour in wool are two different colours.

2. The care text, and who it binds

This is the part people leave to the last week and it is the part with legal weight. In the United States, the FTC's textile rules require fibre content, country of origin and care instructions on wearing apparel sold to consumers, and the wording has to describe a method the item actually survives.

Under a private label those obligations follow the brand on the label, not the mill that wove the cloth — so if you are selling into the US under your own name, the accuracy of “100% cotton” and “machine wash cold” is your responsibility. Whether you also need an RN number depends on your role in the chain; check the FTC's current guidance or your own adviser rather than taking a supplier's word for it. A mill can print what you ask it to print; it cannot take the claim off your hands.

Two practical consequences. Keep the wording identical across every style in the run, or the labels become a sorting problem. And match it to the fabric rather than to the collection: a cotton keffiyeh and a net shemagh do not want the same instruction, and a care label that contradicts the product page is a returns conversation. Keffiyeh care labels and tagging goes through the wording and the placement in detail.

3. Colour: matching or specifying

There are two different requests and they cost different amounts of time:

• Match an existing colourway — you pick from what the line already runs. Fastest, cheapest, and the one to choose if the design is yours mainly through the label and the pack.
• Specify a new colour — the cloth is dyed to your reference. That needs a lab dip you approve before the run, and it is where schedules slip.

Send a physical reference, not a screenshot: a Pantone TCX chip or a piece of the garment you are trying to sit beside. Paper Pantone chips are print references and will not match dyed cotton; a photograph of a colour is not a reference at all. Approve the dip in daylight, then look at it again under the light your customer will actually meet it in — shop spots and a phone camera both shift cloth.

Dye lots move, so plan for the reorder now: keep a retained sample from the first run, ask for a fresh dip against it next time, and expect a tolerance you should agree in writing before you commit to a second batch. The keffiyeh colours guide covers what the patterns and colourways are called, which is the vocabulary the conversation will use.

4. The pack: bag, tag, carton

Retail-ready means the piece can go on a shelf or into a parcel without anyone touching it again. Decide each of these before quoting, because they change the carton and the freight:

• Bag — a plain poly bag is enough for a marketplace parcel; a printed retail bag needs artwork and, in the US, the suffocation warning at the specified size and wording rather than an improvised one.
• Hang tag — 350–400 gsm board, punched and strung, with the size and your brand on the front. Cheap to add, and the thing a customer photographs.
• Folding — flat in a sleeve, or folded to a fixed size with a board insert. A size all your cartons share keeps packing quick.
• Carton — pieces per carton, carton dimensions and gross weight. Ask for all three in the quote: freight is priced on volume and weight, and a carton that is 5 cm too tall across a hundred cartons is money.

5. Barcodes and SKUs

A barcode identifies the colour-and-size combination, not the scarf. If you sell through a marketplace or a shop with a till, you need a real GTIN — a UPC or EAN bought from GS1 under your own prefix. Your prefix is the part that makes the number yours, so do not let a supplier issue numbers for you.

If you sell only through your own site, an internal SKU is enough and you can print it on the bag yourself. Either way, put the sticker on the bag rather than the cloth: a sticker on a woven face is a mark you cannot take off. Ask for the flat carton to arrive with the bags unsealed if you are applying labels or barcodes in your own space.

What to put in the quote request

One message with all of this gets a usable answer instead of a range:

• Quantity per style and per colourway, and how many are going into each label.
• Style numbers — for example from the cotton keffiyeh or polyester keffiyeh range — and the size per style: 110 cm for cotton and polyester, 131 cm for prayer and cashmere, 190 × 90 cm for net.
• Label and tag artwork status: sent, approved, or still being designed.
• Colour: match an existing colourway, or a physical reference for a new one.
• Packing and carton expectations, and whether you need the cartons labelled.
• Delivery country, and whether the date is fixed.

Our own ladder is public, so you can price the cloth before the trim: 1–99 pieces at $13.99 each, 100–499 at $8.99 each applied automatically, and 500 pieces and up quoted per order. Wholesale orders ship direct from origin with shipping and tariffs inside the quote; retail orders ship from the US warehouse in 1–2 business days. Labels, tags and packing are quoted with the order rather than guessed at, which is why the answers above matter more than the exact word count of your email.

What private label does not get you

It does not change the weave, it does not turn a hundred pieces into a custom draft on the loom, and it does not move the legal duty — your brand on the label is what the fibre and care claim attaches to. It also does not lock a colour across reorders unless you keep a sample and approve a dip each time.

What it does buy is a scarf a customer cannot buy from anyone else, and that is worth more than a slightly lower price per piece.

Where to go next

If you want to feel the cloth before deciding on a fibre, the olive green military-weave cotton and the white and red chevron polyester are the two most private-label buyers start from. Start with the wholesale price tiers for the quantities and the quote form, or contact us if your order needs describing in your own words. The wholesale buying guide explains how the tiers and the shipping work, MOQ and lead times covers the minimums a label carries and the schedule a run needs, judging a sample order is the twenty-minute test to run before a run of a hundred, and the keffiyeh size guide settles the measurements.

Shop the styles in this guide: Black & Khaki cotton keffiyeh in traditional weave, 110 × 110 cm, White & Grey polyester keffiyeh, gulf weave, 110 × 110 cm and Jungle Green poly-cotton net shemagh, camouflage, 190 × 90 cm.