Modern Fashion Supply Chain Pt.2
Continuing from chapter 1 regarding the Modern Fashion Supply Chain, this time we will discuss the next chapter. So please pay close attention!
CHAPTER 2: Find a Manufacturer for Your Modern Fashion Supply Chain
As noted in Chapter 1, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the need for fashion labels large and small to rethink traditional fashion supply chain models. The process of flying to factories overseas, outsourcing quality control audits to third parties, and stockpiling products from industrial production cannot survive post-COVID.
Going forward, fashion labels should use a modern, digital, diverse, transparent, predictive and partnered fashion supply chain model as a guide to evaluate the options of fabric suppliers and garment manufacturers. Assembling the best mix of manufacturing partners to meet these new standards required apparel brands to weigh three critical supplier factors such as location, project management support and quality.
Find Fashion Suppliers by Location
Fashion is a global company. Every country, both developed and developing, has advantages and disadvantages of fashion manufacturing. That can make deciding where to find a manufacturer an overwhelming and confusing process for many designers, especially when considering language barriers, conflicting time zones, oversight barriers, and confusing labor and design protection laws.
After all, deciding which garment factory to trust with your label items is a big decision. And decisions you may need to make time and time again as you diversify, grow, and rotate your fashion sourcing priorities. When deciding where to source your fashion, one of the main things you will need to consider is where you will manufacture. To decide, you need to evaluate several factors depending on location:
- Labor costs
- Quality
- Reputation
- Infrastructure
Despite the wide variety of location options, as mentioned in Chapter 1, fashion brands can balance risk in their supply chain by collaborating with a diverse network of fashion suppliers, especially in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and shifts in East and West’s views on globalization.
Your Fashion Supplier and Project Management
Did you know that poor project management can eat up 12% of their business resources in 2019? That’s a heavy price to pay in the best of times, but with COVID-19 already disrupting supply chain efficiencies and apparel sales forecasts, that 12% is becoming a more tenable portion of the shrinking revenue pie.
It may not seem like it at first, but project management is important in every industry, especially one as complex and varied as apparel sourcing. Between coordinating your own brand design or factory design choices, fabric suppliers, cut and sew manufacturers, quality assurance, shipping, warehousing, and merchandising, there are many people, products, and destinations to align and guarantee.
To keep managing fashion brands efficiently, designers must prioritize project management for the entire fashion supply chain. While this usually happens, for the most part, via email and Excel, we advise fashion design houses to look for technology tools that make this easy, as well as sourcing partners willing to help them coordinate intelligent project management across as many internal and external supplies as possible.
The market has several technology tools available to help fashion businesses coordinate with various suppliers in their supply chain such as Zedonk, Accellar, Indigo8, ApparelMagic and many more.
Something very important to consider before integrating any of these valuable project management tools or their competitors is how willing your sourcing partners are to adopt them. Most of the tools listed above do not integrate their already prepared and trained network of apparel manufacturers in their suite of tools. In cases where a business chooses to build project management using the tools option, they will need their supply chain partner to buy in and ensure full training and deployment on the production side, or risk a wasted investment.
Fashion Supplier Quality Assurance
Once you’ve narrowed down your list of potential garment manufacturers, you should ask the factories on your list about at least two key areas of quality assurance and reporting standards: product quality and manufacturer quality.
Product quality is important to even the most inexperienced fashion designer and often determines whether a brand-supplier relationship lasts more than one product or collection. Wherever your fashion business sells, materials, quality of cut and tailoring, and the finish of your garments or accessories should conform to the same standards wherever possible. While a production order may never reach the highest 100% quality verified standards, especially if an order consists of thousands of pieces, you want to work with a fashion supplier who can ensure as much quality as possible. To do so, you should discuss the following with your potential sourcing partners:
Are they product experts? Would you trust a factory that specializes in silk gowns to manufacture your collection of leather pumps? The machinery and skills that garment manufacturers use to create high-quality fashion designs are a significant area of investment. You need assurance, visual proof and certification to ensure that your manufacturing partner has the right equipment and sewerage with the right training to beautifully build your technology package.
Where do they get their raw materials from? Product design starts with raw materials. Even with the main gutter behind the needle, if the raw materials are not suitable, your product will be less quality and attractive. You need certificates of delivery and ingredient composition to confirm that your manufacturing partner will use raw materials that meet the standards you have set for your product line.
What AQL will they agree to meet?
You must agree on an AQL, or Acceptable Quality Level, in your contract with the manufacturer. This standard indicator determines what percentage of quality cuts under all production orders will be received by the fashion business from the manufacturer. The standard AQL for fashion products is 4% for minor defects and 2.5% for major defects, but you must decide whether that is the right industry standard for your brand, unit orders, and budget.
As mentioned, not only do you need to find out how your manufacturing partner will ensure the quality of your product; You should also have a clear understanding of their quality level as a garment factory. This may not seem as important as product quality, but in an era of rapidly increasing digital transparency and rising consumer sentiment for ethically produced products, fashion businesses must evaluate the health, safety and reputation of manufacturing partners early or risk running into a public relations crisis later. day.
Most fashion businesses and designers prefer to verify manufacturer quality in person, however, savvy fashion brands will build contingency plans into their brand supplier audit structures. One reason that matters: a look at the fashion industry’s current dilemma regarding COVID-related travel restrictions done in person, an off the table audit of overseas manufacturers for most of 2020.
COVID-19 supply chain travel issues
While COVID-19 is an exceptional case, global events disrupting supply chains are now occurring every year. Tsunamis, earthquakes and increasing isolationism have all placed the reliability of regular fashion factory audits into the “Uncertain” category. Fashion brands with overseas manufacturers should discuss how best to proceed with regular, transparent factory audits during crises or other travel shutdowns. These conversations need to happen early in this relationship to avoid costly surprises and pivots later.
How does your fashion brand balance factory locations with project management capabilities and quality assurance? Have you found a sourcing partner you can trust to manufacture your labels? If so, then read on to Chapter 3 and find out how to get your branded product from the manufacturer to your customers.