Deployment · Deploy
Find the factory. Verify the certificate.
Mills, factories, certifications, MOQs, landed cost and tariff scenarios - researched, not remembered.
Sourcing agents research and compare manufacturing partners against structured criteria - minimum order quantity, certification status, capability, landed cost and tariff exposure - and return the comparison as a working document.
Sourcing knowledge sits with three people and a spreadsheet. When a tariff line moves or a certificate lapses, nobody finds out until the order is placed.
Not advice. Working parts.
- 01Structured sourcing criteria per category
- 02Mill and factory research against those criteria
- 03Certification status and expiry verification
- 04Landed cost and tariff scenario modelling
- 05Capability and MOQ comparison
- 06Change detection on certificates and trade lines
Artifacts, not a deck.
Comparison documents per sourcing decision
Certification status with expiry tracking
Landed cost and tariff scenarios per route
Change alerts on certificates and trade lines
What changes when the product changes.
This is one of three capabilities where product category genuinely alters the work. Standards last reviewed 2026-08-20.
Mill and laundry are separate businesses with separate audits, and the laundry is usually the one that carries the chemical risk. Shortlisting on the mill alone misses where the exposure is.
- ZDHC Manufacturing Restricted Substances List · voluntary
- French AGEC law 2020
- ESPR textile delegated act
Component suppliers and an assembler, not a mill. Tooling lead times are set months before component POs, so a sourcing decision made late has nowhere to go.
- EU Deforestation Regulation
- ESPR Article 25
Tannery first, hardware second, atelier third. The tannery is where both the environmental audit and the traceability obligation land.
- EU Deforestation Regulation
- Leather Working Group · voluntary
- ESPR Article 25
Vertically integrated knitters and a small number of fibre houses. Substitution is slow because the performance claim has to be re-tested, not just re-costed.
- California AB 1817
- REACH universal PFAS restriction
- ESPR textile delegated act
A short list of specialist elastane and warp-knit mills, most of them serving both categories, with trim houses that do nothing else. Substitution is slow because fit is a function of the exact yarn: a like-for-like fabric swap changes the grade, so the pattern is re-tested rather than re-costed.
- California AB 1817
- REACH universal PFAS restriction
- ZDHC Manufacturing Restricted Substances List · voluntary
A handful of membrane licensors sit upstream of everyone, so a substitution decision is often not yours alone to make.
- California AB 1817
- REACH universal PFAS restriction
- French AGEC law 2020
- ESPR Article 25
Material research
Consulting installs it. The platform runs it.
This capability has a counterpart on McLeuker AI, the agentic platform the same team built and operates. The engagement is how it arrives inside your operation, loaded with your brand context; the platform is where it runs afterwards.
Deploy. Thirty days onto McLeuker AI, then retained.
Your operation loaded onto agents that already know the fashion domain.
Diagnose
Where agents change the economics, and where they do not.
Design
Which agents, which tools, which data, which guardrails.
Deploy
Shipped into the operation with your context loaded.
Operate
Retained partnership, monthly sessions, continuous updates.
What buyers ask first.
Do you sell supplier data?
No. There is no supplier-data product here. This is research capability: agents that go and find the answer against your criteria and show their working, rather than a directory that is stale the day it ships.
How current is certification status?
Verified at the time of research, with change detection running against certificates you are relying on. A lapsed certificate surfaces before the order, which is the only moment it matters.
Can it model tariff exposure?
Yes, as scenarios per route rather than a single number. Landed cost that ignores tariff volatility is the number that gets a season wrong.
Does it replace our sourcing team?
It replaces the research week. Relationships, negotiation and the decision about who to trust are not research problems and do not move to an agent.
Rarely bought alone.
Deployment
Product & Production Agents
Tech packs, grading, trims, QC and the T&A - in the factory's language.
Frontier
AI Governance & Compliance
EU AI Act, content provenance and DPP-ready product data - as an architecture problem, not a policy document.
Deployment
Merchandising & Retail Ops
Assortment gaps, price architecture, competitive audits and sell-through - from live retail, not last quarter's export.
Start with the diagnostic.
Four weeks, fixed fee, and a ranked map of what is worth automating in your operation - including what is not.