As a clothing supplier, one of the main things that your clients expect you to do is provide products of a consistent quality. Wherever those items fit in the overall market, buyers need to know that they can rely on you as a stable source, as any inconsistencies will ultimately reflect on how their clients perceive their brand.

Quality control is, as a result, one of the most important things to take care of as a supplier. From agreeing on clear quality benchmarks to third-party inspections, here’s how to do it properly.

Agree on quality benchmarks

Whenever you engage a new client, you need to make sure that you agree early on to a set of quality benchmarks. It’s important to be as specific as possible here, to avoid any potential disagreements further down the line. 

Set agreements on fabric composition, stitch density, fabric GSM, colour and acceptable tolerance in terms of measurements. These should be clearly documented in the contract, so that there’s no room for future ambiguity. 

In-line inspections

Manufacturing garments is a multi-step process, and ideally, you don’t want to spot an error from an earlier stage once the garment has already gone through all of the latter stages as well. 

By carrying out in-line inspections, you can spot issues mid-process, making it a lot cheaper to both identify and fix these kinds of errors compared to spotting them on a supposedly finished garment. 

Industry standard AQL sampling

It’s impossible to check literally every single item you supply for defects. It’s simply not practical when it comes to large-scale orders, especially when supplying wholesale companies like Screen Textiles. Instead, implement some kind of sampling system, where items are taken at random from each batch. 

Each item can then be checked against an acceptable quality limit (AQL) standard, which includes identifying minor, substantial and critical flaws. If a sample contains these kinds of flaws, then the whole batch will need to be reviewed.

Document everything

It’s important that you keep a paper trail of all of these inspections. Take photos, and make sure that a report is written and recorded for each sample that’s taken from every batch. 

This is an important record to keep in the case that a client ends up disputing quality, of course, but it also gives you long-term insights into quality issues that might emerge. Based on those insights, you can then tweak and update your system, to bring it up to scratch.

Third-party inspections

With larger accounts, it can even be worth using a third-party inspection service. This added level of objectivity can be critically important, with an independent level of quality control that both sides agree on, removing further possible areas of disagreement. 

Quality checks for clothing suppliers are an absolute must. More than just a box-ticking exercise, you need to take them seriously. By following the general practices outlined above, you should be able to ensure your ability to provide products at a consistent standard, maximising the chances that you’re able to build and maintain positive business relationships with your clients.