Outline for Wedding Dresses/ Bridal Dresses
- What you need to know about bridal dresses manufacturing in China
- Importance of quality inspection when importing Bridal Dresses
- What do we check when inspecting Bridal Dresses
What You Need To Know About Bridal Dresses Manufacturing In China
Whenever bridal or flower girl dresses is mentioned, most people think of established brands such as Alfred Angelo, Maggie Sottero, etc. but, there are other unknown brands that produce affordable and good quality wedding dresses. So, who are these brands and where are they found?
Quality Fade
When dealing with goods manufactured in another country, you can easily fail to observe strict monitoring of the quality of your products. As a result, you will eventually end up with product returns due to quality fade. Whether it’s a small issue that compromised quality or a serious issue, the supply chain will be greatly affected.
For instance, assuming you are importing wedding dresses from China. You have been doing this for a while now, but one day, you receive unpleasant news from one of your key distributors. The distributor tells you that customers are complaining of poor quality in the wedding dresses.
Such developments can find you unprepared since you thought you trust your Chinese suppliers after working with them for some years. Now, new worries begin because you start thinking about potential returns for the dresses manufactured by that supplier. What went wrong?
What Does Quality Fade Mean?
Quality fade is the deterioration of product quality with time. However, customers might not notice a decline in quality immediately. Mostly, the changes can be seen or felt after when you compare products produced after a long period of time like comparing the quality of products between two years. The quality drop can easily be noticed.
Experienced importers can attest to how disastrous quality fade can be. For example, you might be an importer of dress shoes. Suddenly, you start receiving complaints from customers and reports of how your shoes wear or get damaged within a short period of use. Or if you deal with jewelry, you realize that the level of purity in the material used to make the jewelry is diminishing with time.
The main cause of quality fade is the use of poor-quality materials by your supplier or the sub-supplier. While the end products might look similar, you will start to notice quality issues as you use the product.
Why Do Importers Deal with Quality Fade?
Like in most businesses, the goal of every supplier is to reduce cost and increase sales. As a result, they try any way possible to reduce the internal costs instead of increasing the prices, which might make them lose customers.
One of the common methods of lowering the production cost is using cheap materials. The transition from quality materials to cheaper ones contributes to decline in quality of the end products, known as Quality Fade.
What makes suppliers expose your business to risk by using low-quality materials without informing you?
Normally, after building trust with customers for a long time, some suppliers assume that the customers won’t bother to check the quality. This is the reason why there are high chances that quality fade might come from the suppliers you’ve worked with for a while. So, you might start noticing quality fade once the supplier has shipped you many orders of good quality.
To ensure that customers hardly notice the change in quality, manufacturers make small changes to parts that can’t be easily discovered, without affecting the general look of the products. If you are not vigilant as an importer, then the minor changes can easily slip and a year can pass without you ever noticing the subtler changes. When such quality issues are left to build, they might soon become major issues by affecting the overall quality of your products to the point of being noticeable.
What Are the Risks of Not Using A Quality Inspection Company?
Here are some of the risks that you expose yourself to when you don’t hire a quality inspection agency:
Charge-backs – issues to do with the late shipment, labeling, product quality and more can result in chargebacks from other parties
Delays – delays don’t just lead to charge-backs from retailers, it may result in canceled orders from customers leading to reduced sales
Damaged Reputation – Not using a product inspection can result in delivering poor quality products to the customer’s hence negative reviews, which in turn damage your reputations.
Quality issues, such as:
- Product recalls
- Customer dissatisfaction hence product returns
- Cost of unsaleable goods
- Re-work cost upon receipt
Overseas Trips – having to send the company staff to foreign countries to meet supplies costs time and money.
Why Wedding Dresses Should Be Inspected?
Unlike other products, bridal dresses are meant for special occasions. As a result, it can be quite disappointing for customers to discover any defects in the dresses, especially after choosing them. It is for this reason why you need the services of a quality inspection company whether it is for a full inspection or AQL inspection.
China has many factories that make wedding dresses. Most of the big companies make prom dresses, evening dresses, bridal dresses, and other dresses for important occasions exclusively for designer brands. Although there are many small companies that hardly get orders due to their limited production ability, what’s surprising is that they still exist.
How is that possible? Well, some of the big factories receive many orders that they sometimes can’t handle, as a result, they outsource some of the tasks to these small manufacturers.
The big companies usually provide small manufacturers with the materials and the process of making the dresses.
The manufacturing process typically includes cutting the fabric, sewing, lacing, beading and more hand works as required when making wedding dresses.
Although the big companies control the brand quality standards and accept only products that meet their quality, it’s possible to get one or two poor quality products that go unnoticed resulting from errors made by the small manufacturers.
With time, some of the small manufacturers grow and begin making wedding dresses competing with big companies.
Some of them even start producing products that match the latest fashion with unique styles. The entry of the small manufacturers into the market makes it more colorful and offers more choices to customers. What’s more is that bride getting to shop dresses at reduced price, especially from the small factories.
But, out of the many producers, some are not qualified. They make and export wedding dresses at affordable prices hence attracting more customers.
One of the best ways to ensure that your customers don’t end up with poor quality bridal dresses from such manufactures is hiring a third-party inspection company such as AQI Service.
Wedding Dresses Inspection Checklist
How to inspect flower girl dresses and bridal dresses:
Check the Finishing of the Inner Part of the Bodice
- Ensure the corset fits perfectly
- Corset sits firmly against the body with no rippling
- Seams of the corset are well stitched
- No extra fabric at CF of corset
- Boning is done correctly; cut at the same angle as the neckline, no gaps between underbust and vertical
- Boning ends without any excess bulk
Check Before Finishing Such as Zipping
- Ensure the top of zipping is done correctly
- Waist should fit perfectly
- Hip fits correctly
- Fit overbust is smooth and rounded
- The neckline isn’t stretched
- The neckline doesn’t gape
- Elastic at neckline with edge correctly sewn
- The corset is well attached to the inside with proper hand-stitching at the CB so that it’s not visible after the gown is fastened
- No puckering on the edge of the neckline
- Seas are neat and not messy or fraying
- Where corrections are done, the materials and seams should be high quality without any degrading
- Lining inside the body should fit without being bunching and too big from the inside
What to Check at The Finished Gown
- Top of zipping fits perfectly
- Course fit correct
- Hip fit correct
- Waist fit correct
- Fit overbust is smooth and rounded, no pointing due to excess depth at bust point
- The neckline doesn’t stretch
- The neckline doesn’t gape
- Then neckline rolls out at no point
- Buttons can close without the zip left exposed
- Corset not visible at CB neckline
- The inside corset isn’t pilling on boning or elastic
- Inside corset is not dirty
- Gown perfectly fits the body without catching or pulling in some areas
- The hem length is correct
- No dirt marks, pulls, holes or any flaws
- No construction errors