The past few days have been busy to say the least, and we are juggling our work and communications knowing full-well weekends are generally a no-go zone, but for the most eager of suppliers.

Even last Friday the 15th, we were trying to get as much clarification across to the suppliers as possible before the weekend. In the case of our past experience and much the same in this case, it is much better to give manufacturers and suppliers all the information they need to produce your item, than wait until Monday and waste potential manufacturing time.

All logo and artwork was provided in illustrator format, but any vector image would have been acceptable, seeing as vectors can be resized to potentially any dimension without loss of quality. All color swatches were sampled and relayed to the suppliers in the appropriate PANTONE Color Code. This universal standard of color numbering and identification allows the manufacturer on the other side to reproduce colors accurately. It’s important to note here that very rarely do two different computer monitors output exactly the same color; therefore steps must be taken to reduce this kind of error.

Whilst the 4 different suppliers charged us different amounts for our sample production (in this case our sample order will consist of 1 concept over 5 different color variations) of 20 pieces – 4 pieces in each color – on average about 4-5 times the estimated cost of the items once we make our official order. Yes, this does seem quite pricey, but taking into account they will need to dye the fabric to our Pantone specifications, create 2-3 separate screen printing moulds for the artwork and logos, most of the price comes from setup costs and not sample production for each individual unit. The majority of these setup costs are a once-off payment only and of course their weight on the order will be significantly reduced over time due to economies of scale. Ontop of that, it’s our policy to always order samples before the official order to further qualify the legitimacy of a supplier. Better to loose $500 than $50,000 right?

Most, if not all of our chosen suppliers have begun sample product at this stage. They have given us a sample lead time of 10-14 days and hopefully there won’t be too many hiccups along the way to delay our shipments.

In an effort to reduce initial project costs, we have reduced our 4 suppliers to 3. With luck, 3 supplier’s samples will be sufficient to confidently push-on further with one main supplier and our first order.

As for the production lead times as well as those from shipping, we are currently weighing our options. The suppliers are currently telling us the lead time for the first order will be 20-25 days. Freight via sea will take another 28 days or so. Express air freight from Fedex or DHL effectively double the unit cost per piece, but only take 2-3 days to arrive.

We need to think on this further and evaluate our options.