After the INSIDE THE FASHION INDUSTRY - Production Issues You Should Expect to Run Into blog post a lot of my readers asked me how quality control works when you are doing development or production offshore. Fair enough! This is not only a great question, but also brings up important steps of production management that you might not know about. So let’s dig into this topic together.
I have said this before, but let me repeat myself, quality checks and a quality control team are crucial! No business passes the development faze without quality control. But one thing that you might not know is that quality checks are more than revising each garment and checking the tech pack. Especially when producing offshore, doing wholesale, and distributing worldwide. It is necessary to follow not only quality standards (for your own branding) but also safety standards and regulations - which is where testing comes in.
Even though testing is relatively new to the fashion industry, the testing department has been growing in this business and it is indispensable for quality control. It is thanks to testing that worldwide distribution meets quality and safety standards. I do not want to say that it is a complicated department, but it does require knowledge and a lot of reading/understanding to meet each country's distribution and client’s requirements.
From basic quality standards, such as perfectly applied buttons, snaps, or color evaluation, to safety precautions, like flammability or chemical testing, this department will work according to what is needed for each particular garment and each particular customer's requirements and when I mention “customer requirements” I am not only talking about wholesale. I am also talking about your own brand standards for quality control.
Tech packs are a great synonym for quality control because a tech pack shows each detail of a garment, each point of measurement, material details, packaging details, everything! But a full detailed tech pack comes later on in the game once you have your garments graded in each size, right? Yes and no!
Yes, it is easier to fill out tech pack information once you have everything, but that does not mean you cannot start developing your tech packs and creating quality standards from an early stage in development. Once you have the final tech sketches, materials, and a size chart, you are good to go into samples, and this is the moment to start looking into quality control.
Does your sample have snaps? Does it have buttons? Is the factory properly stitching each trim so it won’t fall or easily break? Even doing your development offshore, these details need to be caught from the very first samples, until the size check run and production. Ok, Barbara, but if we create samples, do size check runs and everything is good, how do we still make sure production will not be messed up? You test it and you do a production quality check.
There is something that we call production testing/sample pilling, which when testing labs pulls random garments from production to make sure they meet quality standards. Even not going through full testing or avoiding the lab testing expense, you can do that on your own as well.
Of course, if your production is happening locally, quality control is always easier, but when we are talking offshore it can be more complicated, but it is not impossible. And, let’s face it, not rocket science. Whichever manufacturer you are working with, they should be able to ship you random pieces from the production, so you can hire fit models to try them on, make sure the size grade is correct, trims are properly placed and there is nothing wrong.
As I have mentioned, quality control should happen from the very beginning stage of development and, even working with offshore manufacturers, quality standards need to be clearly stated, not leaving room for error. Yes, offshore production can be cheaper, but always keep in mind that MOQs are higher AND, very importantly, development can take a long as well as it can be more expensive.
Why do you think big brands start planning their collection a year or two ahead? Offshore production involves back-and-forth shipments, new rounds of samples, testing labs, and international shipping fees. All of these details add to your timeline and your budget, but they are indispensable because you need to keep quality control throughout the whole process, even though you are not flying there yourself.
Even though there is no actual plan for quality control when doing local or offshore production, you should always consider that a quality check needs to be done in each sample developed, every round of sample development, during the size check run, and production. This includes quality checks on packaging materials and the packaging layout being used. Testing is a whole new world that has been massively growing in the fashion industry and, daily, new brands and wholesalers are requesting that garments need to be tested before accepting production. So it is also an important and efficient way of quality control.
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