Inside Winzen –
The China Factory
Behind Some of our
Most Signature Designs

The Fred Perry Shirt lies at the heart of everything we do. Since it was first designed by Fred in 1952, the design hasn’t changed much. But whilst technologies have evolved, we have ensured that our processes do too, allowing us to make the shirt the best it can be, with as little environmental impact as possible.

A selection of our Fred Perry Shirts are made in England. The remaining styles (including our M3600, G3600 and M6000 shirts) are made in China, where they’ve been produced since 2015 by Winzen, a factory in the Zhongshan area.

Using a combination of hand finishing and state of the art technology, Winzen works hard to make each Fred Perry Shirt exactly as it should be. The factory’s Quality Control Manager states that “extra emphasis is put on quality control” when manufacturing the beloved Fred Perry Shirt. “Rigorous checks are put in place” to guarantee that each shirt adopts our signature fit and is built to be passed down through generations.

First, the raw material – in this case our signature cotton pique – is checked for quality and then dyed. A high-tech DATACOLOR machine is used to mix colours with complete accuracy, with spectral data analysed at several stages to control the consistency and colour match each and every batch. After dyeing, the fabric goes through a full performance test and is relaxed for 48 hours to ensure stability.

Once the fabric has been approved, Winzen use state-of-the-art computerised cutting machines to cut the fabric panels with 100% accuracy, guaranteeing Fred’s famous streamlined fit. The flat knit collar and cuffs are crafted using a dedicated knitting machine, and if our signature twin tipping is required, this is added using recycled threads, then hand-finished. The garment sewing is done by highly-skilled machinists, using recycled thread, and of course – the Laurel Wreath logo, with its 16 leaves, is embroidered perfectly by machine and checked on each and every garment before being stitched into the design.

During the production process, the garment passes through a series of rigorous quality checks before being pressed and packaged up, ready to ship out to its proud new owner.

The factory endeavours to continually reassess its methods and processes to ensure that, not only are they creating high-quality pieces, but that they’re made with as little environmental impact as possible. Winzen use low liquor dyeing machines and methods, which use 50% less water than standard dyeing processes. The factory has recently updated its dye house technology, guaranteeing that every Fred Perry Shirt colourway is just right.

“We have upgraded our colour spectrophotometer to the Datacolor 800. The Datacolor 800 is an amazing bit of technology which can store the colour data of the fabric sample approved by Fred Perry in our computer database. We achieve such data consistently throughout production to control the quality of the colour for each batch of fabric.” This means that the shirt’s desired colour is matched every time and with complete accuracy.

Once the garments are complete and fully packaged, each Fred Perry Shirt is put through an intensive third-party audit to make sure it’s up to a standard that Fred Perry would have been proud of. A tennis shirt fit for a champion.

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Fred Perry has been a member of Better Cotton since 2019 and we are so proud to announce that at the beginning of 2023, we surpassed our targets and reached 100% Better Cotton across our apparel. This means that 100% of our cotton across apparel is sourced in a more responsible way through Better Cotton. Find out more about our responsible cotton sourcing here.