What to ask before the deposit, and before the bulk ships

Should I be worried that a factory outsources part of my order?

Usually not. Almost no manufacturer in Europe owns every machine a garment needs.

Knitting, dyeing, printing and embroidery routinely sit in different buildings, often different towns, and a factory that coordinates them is doing normal work competently. Insisting on a single roof is a good way to rule out most of the capable suppliers on a continent.

The question is not whether your order moves between buildings. It is whether anybody will tell you which buildings. Outsourcing is ordinary; unseen outsourcing is the problem, because you cannot inspect, chase or fix a stage nobody will name.

Every question below is a way of finding out whether the person you are talking to can see the floor your garments are on. None is adversarial and all of them are answerable within a day by a factory that has the answers.

Before the deposit

Which building is my order sewn in, and how many coverstitch machines are in it?

A named site and a number is an answer. "Our partner facility" is not.

The machine count matters more than it sounds. It tells you the capacity actually available for your garment type, and it is a fact somebody has to walk onto a floor to know. A supplier who can tell you there are eleven coverstitch machines in a specific building has a relationship with that building. One who answers in categories has a relationship with a broker.

What is the one thing in my spec you would change?

This is the most useful question on the list, because the answer only exists where somebody has actually read the spec against a machine.

A real answer is specific and slightly inconvenient: this seam will not sit flat in that weight, this tolerance is tighter than the fabric will hold, this pocket placement fights the grain. It tells you a technician looked at your document with a production floor in mind.

If nothing comes back, or if it comes back as general enthusiasm, your spec has not reached anybody who sews. That is worth knowing before money moves, not after.

Can you send a photograph of my fabric on the roll, with the lot number in frame?

Not the building. Not the machines. Your fabric, identifiable, dated.

This is the cheapest verification in the whole process and it is disproportionately informative, because it can only be produced by someone standing next to your fabric. It confirms the fabric exists, that it is the right one, and that it is where they say it is.

A factory that has your fabric sends it the same day. Anything else is an answer about the order's real status.

What happens if I ask a technical question?

The content of the reply matters less than its shape and its timing.

An answer that comes back quickly, in the responder's own words, with a qualification or a trade-off in it, came from someone who knows the process. An answer that arrives a day later, phrased in your own words back at you, was relayed. Somebody carried your question somewhere else and carried a reply back.

Relaying is not fraud and it is not necessarily a reason to walk away. But it tells you how many people sit between your question and the machine, which is the same number that will sit between a problem and its fix.

Before the bulk ships

The four above establish who you are dealing with. These four establish what they actually made. Ask for all of them before you approve shipping, not after the boxes arrive.

What should measurement evidence actually look like?

A statement that everything is within tolerance is a conclusion. You want the evidence: garments on a table with a tape across them, the measurement legible.

This is not distrust. It is that "measurements are fine" and a photograph of a tape reading 54.5 on a spec that says 54 plus or minus 0.5 are different objects, and only one of them can be checked against your own document.

Which details should I ask to see close up?

Stitching, seams, pockets, labels, trims.

These are the parts that get rushed when a line is finishing a run, and they are the parts a general photograph of a folded garment cannot show. A shot of the whole shirt tells you the shirt exists. A shot of the cuff tells you how it was made.

How do I check the bulk matches the sample I approved?

Ask them to photograph one against the other, in the same frame, in the same light.

Then look at three things: does the colour match, does the wash match, does the fabric look the same. Shade drift between a sample and a bulk lot is the single most common substantive fault in a first production run, and side by side in one frame is the only way to see it. Two photographs taken separately will not show it, because your eye cannot hold a colour between images.

How do I check the size breakdown before it ships?

How many units in each size, and the cartons packed.

A run that is correct in total and wrong in distribution is a run you cannot sell through. If you ordered a curve weighted to M and L and received it weighted to XS and XL, that is a problem you want to find while the goods are still on their floor and the conversation is still about production rather than about a credit note.

The point of asking all eight

None of these takes a competent factory more than a day, and none of them is a test somebody passes or fails on character. They are requests for artefacts that already exist: a machine count somebody knows, a spec somebody read, a roll somebody is standing beside, a tape across a garment.

What changes is not the factory. It is the amount of your order that is visible to you while it can still be influenced. Splot sends all four of the second set on every production without being asked, which is the version of this that does not depend on anybody remembering.