How to Avoid Miscommunication and Delays With Clothing Manufacturers
Whether you’re a startup launching your first collection or an established label scaling up production, clear communication is key to ensuring your manufacturing process runs smoothly. This is particularly true if you outsource to a third-party manufacturer overseas.
Unfortunately, a lot of unforeseen variables can hamper smooth communications with your manufacturer. They include language barrier, lack of understanding of key technical terms, frequent changes to tech pack designs, and many more. Left unchecked, these issues can lead to production delays, and in extreme cases, damage to your brand’s reputation.
This guide provides practical tips to avoid miscommunication and delays with clothing manufacturers, helping you foster better collaboration and deliver your products on time.
How to Foster Smooth Communication With Clothing Manufacturers
Here are some important steps to take to ensure hitch-free collaboration with your manufacturers, regardless if they are local or off shore.
1. Invest Quality Time Into Developing a Detailed Tech Pack
Tech packs, more often than not, are the foundation of every garment manufacturing process. They serve as blueprints that guide your manufacturer to produce your designs just the way you want them. As such, a poorly-designed tech pack will inevitably lead to poorly produced wears your customers wound’t like.
How do you ensure that your tech pack designs turn out great?
1. It Must Be Super Detailed: Every tech pack you send to a manufacturer must be super detailed, or you might end up unsellable products. Some of the important details to include in your tech pack designs are as follows:
- Reference photos. Gives manufacturers a visual cue of your design idea.
- Technical sketches/flats. This should include front, back and inside sketches of your garment design, with clearly outlined measurements.
- Material specification. It’s important that you communicate the type of material you wish your manufacturer to use in the tech pack.
- Size chart/size specification.
- Bill of Materials.
- Color specification.
We suggest you read our guide on creating a tech pack for more information. Better yet, check out this video.
Need a tool to streamline your tech pack creation process? Uphance PLM has got you covered.
Design faster and collaborate easier with manufacturers using Uphance PLM
2. Keep It Simple: Although it’s important to keep your tech packs as detailed as possible, don’t overdo it. Just add the important stuff and leave out the fluff. Keep your layout as clean as possible, your messaging clear and specific, and your technical sketches concise.
3. Revise For Errors Before Sending Off: This is probably the most important part of creating a tech pack. Failure to properly review your tech pack designs for errors can result in delays and bloated manufacturing costs. We recommend hiring a freelance tech pack specialists from platforms like Upwork for this purpose.
PS: It’s important to avoid frequent changes to your tech pack designs to avoid stalling the production process.
2. Try to Understand Technical Terms In The Garment Manufacturing Space
How can you communicate with a garment manufacturer if you can’t speak their language? By language, we mean all the technical jargons used in the industry. Knowing these terms and their meanings allows you to communicate your design ideas more effectively. Let’s go over some of them.
- Colorway – Color style for a design
- BOM – Bill of Material
- Grading – Increasing or decreasing the sizing of a garment design proportionately.
- MOQ – Minimum order quantity
- Pattern – A template for designing garments. Can be paper or digital based.
You can check out this post for a comprehensive list of technical terms in garment manufacturing.
3. Plan to Overcome Language Barriers
Working with overseas manufacturers, particularly those in Asia (China, Vietnam, Bangladesh) etc can present you with a unique challenge: language issues. Some creative ways to overcome language barrier problems are as follows:
- Use Clear and Simple Language
- Leverage Visual Aids
- Work with a Translator
- Adopt Translation Tools
- Schedule Regular Video Calls
- Confirm Understanding
4. Put The Manufacturer’s Specialty In Mind
Always put specialty in mind when searching for the right manufacturer. For example, if you are looking to produce jeans, you are better off partnering with a manufacturer that has a track record of producing top-quality denims. You will likely find good jeans manufacturers in countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh.
For shirts, dresses, and sportswear, China-based manufacturers are your best bet.
5. Utilize Multiple Channels of Communication
When collaborating with manufacturers, especially across different time zones or languages, relying on a single communication channel can lead to missed details and delays. Using multiple channels of communication ensures clarity, speed, and consistency throughout the production process.
Here’s how you can optimize multi-channel communication with your manufacturers:
- Email for Documentation
Use email to send detailed instructions, tech packs, and agreements. This creates a clear, searchable record of all discussions and decisions. - Instant Messaging for Quick Updates
Platforms like WeChat or WhatsApp are perfect for real-time updates, quick questions, or sharing images and videos during production. - Video Calls for Complex Discussions
Schedule Zoom or Teams meetings for detailed conversations, such as reviewing samples or resolving misunderstandings. Video calls provide a personal touch and allow for better collaboration.
Conclusion
Avoiding miscommunication with your manufacturer not only ensures your production process runs smoothly without hitches, but also reduces manufacturing costs and improves customer satisfaction. Following the steps outlined in this post will go a long way in smoothening communication with your manufacturer, regardless of how far or close they are.
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