Apparel Warehouse Requirements: The Specification and 12 Acceptance Tests (2026)

An apparel warehouse has to do four things before it does anything else: keep every size and colour of a style in one place, hold hanging and flat-packed stock in separate zones built for each, keep dust, humidity and light inside limits the fabric survives, and produce a written record that proves it at intake, at dispatch and on the day a buyer asks. Lozy runs apparel and fashion warehousing on those four as recorded requirements rather than good intentions, across 77+ warehouses and more than one million square feet of live space, billed monthly on a GST invoice with no lock-in. What follows is the specification to hand a landlord or a 3PL: every line measurable, every line testable in a single visit.

Key takeaways

• One style-colour run occupies one contiguous bay. A run split across two bays fails the requirement even when every piece is on site, because nobody picking from a list can find the half that moved.
• Rails are specified in running metres and rated load, not in "space for hanging". A rail rated at 40 kg per metre carrying 300 g shirts is different equipment from one carrying beaded lehengas at 1.2 kg.
• 45-60% relative humidity, no visible dust on a dark-cloth wipe at 1.5 metres and no direct sun on a stocked shelf are all checkable with a meter, a cloth and a torch.
• The acceptance table below carries 12 rows. Each has a minimum, a test you can run in ninety minutes, and the specific loss the row prevents in this trade.

What an apparel warehouse must provide, and how the space has to be zoned

A rate per square foot tells you the price of floor. It does not tell you whether that floor can hold a size run together, whether a rail is rated for forty woollen coats or four, or whether last week's sale returns are stacked on the only free table. What an apparel business needs is a zone plan with dimensions and an acceptance test for each zone — because the test is what turns a visit into evidence. On the per-area basis that plan starts at ₹21 per sq ft per month in Delhi NCR, and under a commercial warehousing arrangement you are billed for the bays you use.

Six zones do the work in a garment shed. A site that cannot show all six at usable size is not interchangeable with one that can, so write the minimum into the sheet before you look at a building.

1. Inbound and inspection. A covered unloading bay, a table at working height under daylight-balanced light, and room for four to six carts of open cartons. Style code, size and colour meet the packing list here, so it must be big enough to open cartons without stacking them.
2. Flat-pack shelving. Long-span or boltless shelving with one shelf line per size, bays at least 1,200 mm wide and shelves at least 450 mm deep. A folded range lives or dies in this zone; pallet racking cannot substitute.
3. Hanging rail. Pitch between rails of 900 mm or more, brackets every 1,500 mm, and a stated load per running metre. Rails belong on a wall run or a dedicated bay, never mid-aisle where a trolley catches a sleeve.
4. Bulk and oversize floor. Marked footprints for bulk bags and export cartons with 1.2 m aisles kept clear — the zone most sheds are missing, and the reason bags of hosiery end up in the aisle within a fortnight. Where the requirement is a whole floor of cartons rather than shelving, industrial bulk warehousing prices it on area.
5. Returns grading floor. Open, lit floor with a table, deliberately kept empty. If it doubles as overflow storage it is not a grading floor.
6. Dispatch staging. Marked floor where picked cartons wait for a vehicle, separated from the pick face so a part-built order is not picked twice.

The envelope matters as much as the zones, and the checks are physical: a plinth at least 450 mm above yard grade, a paved apron falling away from the doors, gutters discharging clear of the wall, roof insulation under the sheet so condensation does not drip onto the top shelf, and a sealed floor that does not chalk under a trolley wheel. General lighting at 300 lux, 500 lux over the inspection table, and a power point there for a tagger or steamer.

Clear height only matters where racking stands: specify the height of your top shelf plus 600 mm and stop. A garment shed does not need the twelve-metre clear height a pallet operation wants, and paying for it is one of the quiet ways apparel businesses over-rent. The same logic applies to floor load — folded garments are light, and the load that matters is the shelving's beam capacity and a loaded trolley, not the slab's design capacity for a fork-lift. Where a brand needs to test those assumptions against real buildings, the Haryana warehousing guide sets out how the state's two corridors differ.

The size-colour run is the unit of storage, not the carton

Every other rule here exists to protect one thing: the run. A style is not a product. It is a set of sizes across a set of colours, and the moment part of that set sits somewhere else, the warehouse has stopped being a warehouse and become a search problem. So the requirement is written plainly — each style-colour combination occupies one contiguous bay, and any overflow goes to a marked secondary location recorded against the primary.

The arithmetic explains why this cannot be left to goodwill. Take a range of 120 styles in three colours and five sizes at 20 pieces a size. That is 36,000 pieces, 360 runs, 100 pieces in each run. If every run takes its own bay, the range needs 360 bay positions before a single piece of carryover is counted. Put the same range on a rail at twelve pieces per style-colour and 30 garments per running metre, and the hanging side alone is 144 running metres. Neither number is unusual; both are what a brand discovers after signing for a floor it thought was generous.

Run integrity is also the cheapest thing on this list to test. Ask the facility to show you three styles from your own intake list, chosen by you. Walk to each. Confirm that every size and colour of that style is present in the bay in front of you, that the shelf lines are labelled by size, and that the location record names bay, shelf and position rather than "apparel section". Then ask the question that separates a real system from a tidy-looking one: what happens when a run outgrows its bay? A good answer describes a secondary location code written into the system the same day. A bad answer describes a picker moving "the extra" somewhere sensible.

The failure is expensive in a way that is easy to under-estimate, because a split run does not look broken. The stock is on site, the count reconciles at month end and the shelf looks full. What breaks is the pick: an order for three medium and two large ships short on the medium, the buyer is told the size is unavailable, and the reorder goes to another label. Weeks later the missing twelve pieces surface four racks away, still folded, now out of season. In a trade where the run is the sellable unit, a run that cannot be found in one place is indistinguishable from stock that was never bought. Inventory and stock storage is built around position-level records for exactly this reason, and the inventory warehousing guide sets out what a running record should contain.

Two supporting requirements follow. Intake must place the run, not merely receive it: whoever racks the carton decides the bay, and that decision is recorded before the carton is broken down. And a run must never be split across two buildings, only two bays — half a range in the next shed is a break no pick list can repair. The apparel brand warehousing guide covers how a range is organised across a season; this page concerns only what you demand in writing.

Dust, humidity, light and pest control: four limits you can measure

Garments are not fragile the way glass is; they are fragile the way paper is. Nothing breaks them in a moment. Dust, damp, sunlight and insects take a season to do their work, and by the time the damage shows, the stock has lost its resale price. All four are measurable, so all four belong in the specification as numbers rather than assurances.

Dust

The requirement is a wipe test, not a promise. Run a dark cloth across the top shelf of a loaded bay at about 1.5 metres. A visible grey film is a fail, and it will be worse nearer the door. The controls are unglamorous: shutters closed except while loading, a mat well at the pedestrian door, no open cartons on the floor, dust covers on shelving that holds hanging or sample stock, and housekeeping that includes the rack tops. In a shared facility this tests the operator's routine, because one tenant's open cartons dust the whole shed.

Humidity

Write the band as 45 to 60 per cent relative humidity, logged daily through the monsoon, with the meter at shelf height rather than on the office wall. Delhi NCR's July to September is the whole argument: a shed with a low plinth, a yard that ponds, or a drain invert running back towards the wall will sit above 70 per cent for weeks, and mildew in cotton and viscose appears as a smell before it appears as a mark. Ask for the log, not the meter. Then walk the walls and the bottom shelf of the rack nearest the door after rain if you can.

A dry shed is not a conditioned one: Lozy does not claim calibrated temperature or humidity control, and racking does not turn one into the other. Where a fibre or a finish needs a held band with alarms, specify it separately as a specialist facility.

Light

Sunlight is a slow bleach. A shelf taking direct sun through a skylight or an open shutter for two hours a day shows a faded fold line by the end of a season, and the piece becomes unsaleable at full price without anyone being able to date the loss. The requirement is easy to write and easy to check: no direct sunlight on any stocked shelf at any hour, display and sample pieces at 300 lux or below, and any glazing over a rack removed, shaded or filmed. Visit at the hour the sun comes in, not the hour that suits the landlord. A torch across a rack face also shows whether the light fittings are clean, which tells you how the rest of the housekeeping runs. Stock that is stored mainly for how it looks — beauty, gifting, display sets — is described in the beauty and personal care warehousing guide, and the light rules are the same.

Pest control for natural fibres

Wool, silk, cotton, linen, leather and any blend containing them are food. So are the starch sizing and the trims. That makes pest control a storage requirement rather than a facilities nicety, and it needs three parts written down: a treatment frequency (monthly is the working norm in a garment shed), numbered glue boards or bait stations mapped to the floor plan, and a dated report after each visit naming what was found and where. Ask for the last three reports and the board map. An operator who answers "as needed" is telling you there is no schedule, and insect damage in a folded stack is found one piece at a time, always too late to claim.

The routine controls sit alongside the schedule: no food or drink in the storage area, waste removed daily rather than kept in a corner, cartons never against an external wall, and returned goods held in a sealed area until checked. Leather and shearling deserve their own line in the sheet, because they arrive with a smell that attracts the same insects and suffer hide damage a cotton range would not.

The acceptance specification: twelve rows to take on the visit

This is the part that does the work. Each row carries the requirement, the minimum you accept, the test that proves it and the loss it prevents in this trade. Print it, and take a tape measure, a hygrometer, a dark cloth, a torch and one of your own cartons. Ninety minutes with those five settles more than a month of correspondence.

Three rows deserve an argument before you sign, because operators treat them as optional. Run integrity is a systems question: the answer to "what happens at overflow" tells you whether a system exists. Returns floor is an area question, and area is the first thing sacrificed when a shed gets busy. Scan at inbound is a discipline question — a facility that checks cartons against a paper list can still be good, but price that reconciliation into your own team's time. The warehouse inspection checklist runs the physical checks in the same order, and the 3PL warehousing in Delhi NCR guide covers what changes when an operator holds the record.

Returns grading, and the floor that season-end sale stock needs

Two surges hit an apparel and fashion warehousing operation that no other trade experiences in this shape. Returns arrive continuously and again in a wave after a sale, and season-end stock comes back from dealers, marketplaces and stores in the same fortnight. Both need floor rather than shelf, and both need it when the pick face is busiest. A specification that sizes only the storage bays has sized the wrong thing.

Returns work is a sequence, and each step needs a place to happen: receive and match to the order, inspect against a grading standard, sort into resaleable, seconds, repair or write-off, re-bag or re-tag, then return to a pick position. That sequence cannot run on a shelf. It needs a table, light that shows a fault rather than hides it, a bin per grade, and enough open floor to lay out a hundred pieces without stacking them. Write the requirement as area per unit of return flow — 150 sq ft of grading floor per thousand units a month is a workable starting point for a moderate brand — and check on the visit that the floor is empty rather than holding pallets. Order handling for that flow is what e-commerce warehousing prices, and the e-commerce brand guide covers the pick-and-pack side.

Grading standards belong in the agreement, not in a picker's judgement. Define what counts as resaleable: unworn, tags attached, no odour, no makeup or deodorant mark, no stretched neckline, packaging intact. Everything else is a second and must be recorded as one. The commercial point is blunt — an ungraded return sells a fault to the next customer, and the cost is not the refund but the review and the repeat purchase that never happens.

Season-end sale stock has a different requirement: separation with a code. Unsold stock returning from dealers in mixed cartons, carryover the brand intends to hold for next year, and seconds bound for a clearance channel are three categories, and mixing them is how a full-price dispatch goes out at a discount. Specify a marked sale zone with its own location code, a rule that sale stock never sits inside a live run bay, and a monthly reconciliation of what is in it. The same zone absorbs pre-season overflow, which is why the area is worth measuring even in a quiet month — and why seasonal warehousing is priced by the month rather than by the year.

Record-keeping: what is written down, by whom, and how often

A garment warehouse without records is a room with clothes in it. The record is the product you are buying, because it is the only thing that lets a brand answer a buyer, a lender, an insurer or a marketplace auditor. Six registers carry the load, and each needs an owner and a frequency. If an operator cannot name the owner, the register does not exist.

1. Inbound register, per consignment. Date, vehicle, carton count, style codes, size and colour breakdown, pieces received against the advance list, and every exception — written at the gate, closed the same day, signed by whoever counted. The scan at inbound is what makes it trustworthy; a paper list checked by eye records intent.
2. Location record, per run. Bay, shelf, position and quantity for each style-colour-size, updated whenever a run is moved, split or merged. The most valuable document in the building, and the one most often kept in someone's head.
3. Dispatch register, per order. Picked quantities by style and size, carton count, courier or vehicle, date released. Wholesale assortments and single-unit web orders belong in the same register with a channel field, or the two channels quietly borrow from each other — the split that warehousing for B2B distribution describes from the dealer's side.
4. Returns and grading log, per batch. Date received, order reference, grade assigned, action taken, date the piece re-entered stock or was written off. This is the audit trail behind every refund and every resale.
5. Environment and pest log. Daily humidity through the monsoon, the monthly pest report with its board map, housekeeping checklist, and any water ingress noted with date and action. Photographs help; a dated register line is what an insurer accepts.
6. Stock count and reconciliation, monthly. A count by style, size and colour against the location record, with variances investigated rather than written off. In a fast-moving range a quarterly count is not a count, it is archaeology.

Three details decide whether these registers are real. The unit: records at style-size-colour level, because the carton is not what gets sold. The timestamp: a record written a week later is a reconstruction, and reconstructions drift towards whatever explains the variance most kindly. And access: you see your own position without asking a person. Ask to see a real report for another tenant with the identity removed.

Barcode and tag discipline sits underneath all six. Every piece should be scannable at intake, on the brand's own EAN or a facility-applied label carrying style, size and colour. Where a range arrives with swing tags but no scannable code, tagging becomes a handling charge and a lead time, better priced in advance than found at the loading bay. Tags also carry legal content — MRP, net quantity, manufacturer details — so a warehouse that re-tags handles a declared retail package, not a loose piece. Send your range size and we will return the record format we keep, one page covering the six registers.

Licences and documents: what the business holds, what the premises must show

Nothing in a garment warehouse needs a food, drug or cosmetic licence, and any operator who suggests otherwise is selling a package you do not need. What the trade needs is a short, unglamorous set of business and premises documents, and the test on the visit is whether the building can produce its own while you stand in it.

What the apparel business itself must hold

• GST registration in the entity that owns the stock, at the address that will appear on the storage invoice. Without it, input credit on the monthly rent is not claimable and the storage cost quietly rises by the tax. The mechanics are published on the GST portal.
• Shops and establishment registration, or the state trade licence, for the premises where the business operates — a requirement that follows the entity and the municipality, and one a brand expanding across NCR often holds in one state and forgets in another.
• Udyam registration where the business qualifies as micro, small or medium, which also governs eligibility for several state schemes and for delayed-payment protection.
• Importer-exporter code from DGFT where any part of the range is imported or exported. Apparel ranges frequently are, and the code sits with the brand, not the warehouse — the process is set out in the importers and exporters guide.
• Label compliance: retail packages carrying MRP, net quantity, manufacturer or packer details and consumer-care information as legal metrology rules require, plus the care-labelling content an Indian Standard describes. The Bureau of Indian Standards lists the textile standards an auditor may test against, rather than leaving them to guesswork.

What the premises must be able to show

• A fire safety certificate or NOC from the state fire service for the building as used, with extinguishers, hose reels and detectors serviced and tagged within twelve months. Read the address and the occupancy it names — a NOC for another shed in the same compound is not your NOC.
• Building approval and occupancy documentation, including any mezzanine. An unapproved mezzanine over a rack is where a fire-load problem starts and where an insurer's survey ends.
• Property tax and electricity connection in the names the operator claims, which is a plain way to establish that whoever is renting you space controls it.
• Insurance covering the building, plus a written answer on whether tenant stock is covered or must be insured by you. In this trade the second is normal.
• GST tax invoice in your entity's name, with storage and handling on separate lines where they are priced separately. Without it the arrangement is informal, and an informal arrangement is the first thing to fail when a landlord changes his mind.

Two negatives save time. Apparel storage does not require FSSAI registration or a CDSCO licence; those belong to food and to medical devices. It also does not require WDRA registration unless the operation issues negotiable receipts against commodities, which a brand's garment stock is not — the Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority publishes the scope if a lender raises it. Knowing what you do not need stops a compliance conversation becoming a sales pitch about extras.

What moves the monthly figure for apparel storage

Published rates for this trade are a basis, not a quote, and the basis you choose moves the number more than any negotiation. Lozy's own published figures are the only ones quoted here: warehouse space from ₹21 per sq ft per month in Delhi NCR as a starting basis, an inventory plan from ₹4,499 per month, seasonal space from ₹1,299 per month, long-term space from ₹1,199 per month, short-term storage from ₹699 per month, and e-commerce order handling from ₹4,999 per month. Every one is billed monthly on a GST invoice, none carries a long lock-in.

Which basis fits is a question about the range, not the budget. A brand holding a full range as a running record wants the inventory plan, because the value is the position-level record. A brand whose stock arrives for a drop and leaves at the sale wants seasonal warehousing, because paying for a year of floor to hold a five-month range is the quietest overspend in this trade. A brand pricing a whole floorplate wants the per-area basis on warehouse space for rent. A label that intends to stay for years is better on long-term warehousing, and one holding a single consignment for a few weeks on short-term storage. The seasonal warehousing guide works through the calendar version of that choice.

Above the basis, six inputs move the monthly figure, and only one of them is a rate.

1. How the stock is held. A folded run on shelving, a hanging run on a rated rail and a palletised stack of cartons are three different uses of the same square foot. A rail usually costs more per piece, because it holds air as well as garments — a real cost of keeping a piece saleable rather than creased.
2. How fragmented the range is. A 360-run range at one run per bay needs 360 positions; the same pieces consolidated by style would need less floor and be unpickable. Fragmentation is the price of run integrity, and the sheet should say so rather than let it appear as a surprise on the first invoice.
3. Term and season shape. A range held for one drop, a range held all year and a range that doubles for a wedding season are three bookings. Monthly billing exists so the footprint can follow that shape instead of being fixed at the peak.
4. Handling and value-added work. Tagging, re-tagging, steaming, re-bagging, kitting a set, grading returns and building mixed wholesale assortments are labour priced on top of storage. In apparel they are rarely optional, so ask for them as a line rather than an adjustment.
5. Returns volume. A grading floor and the labour to use it scale with return rate, and an online-heavy channel mix raises both. A brand that models storage without returns is modelling half its warehouse.
6. Location inside NCR. The per-area basis varies across the region with the land beneath it; the cost per pallet guide shows how to compare two facilities without comparing unlike things.

Price the peak, not the average: space is needed while the range is intact and unsold, and again in the fortnight the sale closes.

If you want the arithmetic done against your own range, send the style count, sizes per style, colours and pieces per size on WhatsApp and we will reply with bays, running metres and a monthly figure rather than a rate you have to translate yourself.

The five failures — and the nine-step handover that prevents them

These are the ways apparel storage goes wrong in practice, and every one is a specification failure rather than a building failure. A shed cannot fail a requirement it was never given. The steps that follow are how the sheet in this article becomes a range that can be picked on a Monday morning.

The five failures

1. The run gets split, quietly. The range outgrows its bay in week three, a picker moves the surplus nearby, nobody records it, and the location record becomes fiction. One line in the sheet prevents it; afterwards it is almost undetectable, because the count still reconciles.
2. Flat-pack stock is put on pallets. Cartons are cheaper to handle than shelves, so the range ends up stacked and the size line disappears into a mixed carton. The first symptom is a pick rate that falls with no visible cause.
3. The rail is bought, not specified. A cheap rail on light brackets carries shirts and fails on coats. It bows, garments slide to the middle, shoulders crease, and stock that was saleable at intake is seconds by the time it ships.
4. Returns are treated as stock. A returned piece goes straight back because the grading table is covered in cartons. The next buyer receives the fault and the brand pays twice — in the return, and in the review that follows it.
5. Sale stock sits inside the live range. The new season is shelved alongside last season's carryover, a picker takes the nearest piece, and a full-price order ships at a discount. A separate location code costs nothing and protects the margin.

Nine steps from requirement sheet to first dispatch

1. Write the requirement sheet. Styles, sizes, colours, pieces per size, units per carton, which pieces hang and which fold, bulk bags, monthly return volume, season window. One page, and everything else is measured against it.
2. Send it, with the twelve acceptance rows, to every candidate. Operators answer a specification differently from the way they answer "what have you got", and a written minimum ends the practice of being shown the best bay and allocated another.
3. Ask for the document pack before the visit. Fire NOC, sample GST invoice, pest reports, insurance position, location-record format. Reading these first means the visit is spent on the building.
4. Visit with the test kit. Tape, hygrometer, dark cloth, torch, one loaded carton of your own and one heavy hanger. Run the twelve rows, and photograph the bays you are offered, not the ones that look best.
5. Mark the bay plan and sign it. Bay numbers, shelf counts, rail metres and bulk footprints drawn on the facility's own layout and countersigned. "About 4,000 sq ft in the apparel section" is not an allocation; a bay list is. The Gurgaon warehousing guide and the Faridabad warehousing guide both show how much a bay plan changes between estates.
6. Agree the record format and your access to it. Who writes the inbound register, what the weekly report contains, how you see your position unaided, and who you call when a run is short.
7. Sign the clauses that matter — listed below — and confirm the invoicing entity, billing date and notice period in writing before the first carton moves.
8. Run a trial intake on one style. One style, all sizes, all colours, checked in and racked while your team watches, reconciled the same day against the packing list and the location record. A trial that reconciles is worth more than a facility tour.
9. Release the balance, then review at 30 days. Move the range in waves rather than one convoy, and review the first month against the six registers. The first month tells you whether the specification was met.

The clauses that belong in the agreement

• Allocated space described by bay. Name the bays, shelves, rail metres and bulk footprints, not only a square-foot figure, so the requirement you tested is the one you get.
• Run-integrity obligation. A sentence stating that stock is held one run per location and that any move is recorded the same day. It converts your key requirement from good practice into contractual duty.
• Environment and pest schedule. The humidity band, the treatment frequency, the record you will be shown and how often. Vague wording is worth nothing in a dispute; a frequency and a report are.
• Returns floor and sale zone. The area reserved, and a commitment that it is not used for general storage. Without it, grading space disappears in the first busy month.
• Access and notice. Your right to send staff or an auditor to the bay, the notice required, the hours. Apparel brands need physical access at stock-take and at season change.
• Liability, insurance and declared stock value. What the operator's policy covers, what yours must cover, and the value of stock held. Insurers ask, and a verbal answer does not satisfy them.
• Billing, GST and exit. The invoicing entity, billing date, whether GST is included or added, notice period, and the process for releasing stock at exit including a date by which the location record is handed over. Lozy bills monthly with no lock-in, and the exit clause is what proves a no-lock-in claim. Where the arrangement runs through a business warehousing plan, those terms sit in the same document.

The bay description and the run-integrity obligation together are the whole specification in contractual form; if a landlord will not sign them, the twelve rows were theatre. The exit clause matters because stock leaves in a hurry at the end of a season, and a brand that cannot retrieve its range on a week's notice has handed over its calendar with its cartons.

Where Lozy fits, and where we do not

Lozy fits the middle of this specification well: labelled rack and shelf positions for folded runs, rail space for hanging pieces, marked bulk floor, a returns area, monthly billing with a GST invoice and no lock-in. We hold stock dry, above the floor, under a roof and on record, and we show you the record before you sign. What we do not claim: calibrated temperature or humidity control, or a bonded customs facility. If a fibre needs a held climate band, or a consignment must stay under bond, that part belongs with a specialist and we say so on the call rather than after the stock arrives.

Read the apparel brand warehousing guide for how a range is organised season by season, apparel and fashion warehousing for the service itself, and the Noida warehousing guide if your stock needs to sit on the eastern side of the region. For the paperwork, write to care@lozy.in with the requirement sheet attached and we will reply with the bay plan and the document pack.

Related guides

• Apparel and fashion warehousing: size runs and season cost
• Warehouse inspection checklist
• Warehousing in Gurgaon
• Inventory and stock storage

Sources. Rates, network figures and facility descriptions are Lozy's own published pages. GST registration and input credit: GST portal. Warehousing regulation and the scope of negotiable receipts: WDRA. Textile standards and care labelling: Bureau of Indian Standards. Sector context: IBEF textiles and apparel and the Ministry of Textiles. All links checked 25 October 2026.

About the author. Lozy Editorial Desk. This specification was written from Lozy's own facility, rate and record-keeping practice, and from public sources a reader can check. No statistic, certification or capability in it has been invented, and no temperature, humidity or bonded-storage guarantee is claimed.

Last updated: 25 October 2026. If a row in the acceptance table needs interpreting for your range, call +91 93547 12345 or write to care@lozy.in.