Recently, I was asked about the sample development process and specifically, if you as a fashion brand have to pay suppliers for samples of their products. I'm talking about samples of clothing products that they've made.
In my recent video, I wanted to answer that question for you. It's really important one as many people, rightly so, want to get samples from multiple vendors so they can check quality before going ahead with production. So I created a video on the Fashion Product Sampling Process. Below is a direct transcript from the video, or if you prefer, you can click here to watch the free video.
What is the Sample Process?
The first thing that I want to address is the sample making process, and the question that I had about whether or not brands are expected to pay for their samples. So I wanted to dive into that topic a little bit today.
First things first, if you're brand-new and don't know what the sample making process is, then let's go over that. Basically a lot of fashion brands who are brand-new think that they can just draw out a quick sketch or something like that, hand over to the factory and the factory can take it from there.
But unfortunately that's not the case. We actually have to provide a lot of information ourselves to the factory. Before we're even doing any kind of factory sourcing/searching anything like that, we want to make sure that we have this detailed document, this blueprint so to speak of our products and that's something called a tech pack. When we've got to that tech pack stage what we typically do in the industry is send that to multiple vendors and get some ideas for pricing and see what they offer whether we're happy with different inclusions and then normally we will pick one or sometimes we pick multiple to make an initial sample of our product to check whether we're happy with that factory.
Why Make a Sample?
There’s really two reasons for this sample in this first instance this first sample.
The first one is to check the quality of the factory, check that we're happy. Not only with what they've actually delivered the work that they've produced and sent to us in the form of that sample. But also just to see how things went. How is the communication? Did they listen to us? And use that as a bit of a trial for whether or not this factory is one to work with again.
Some people have multiple factories that they have a sample with initially, so there may be comparing the samples and the quality and the price and so on. That's the very first stage and so to go back to the original question.
Yes, you are going to pay for samples and it is absolutely worth it because you don't want to be proceeding with a factory committing to a big order potentially without having seen a sample and what they're capable of. I would always have a sample of your own product made before you commit to any large order. Yes it might be worthwhile and helpful to see a sample that they've made for somebody else, but of course at the end of the day we want to make sure that your product is possible to be made by them and they understand the fashion manufacturing process. We want to make sure that they have all of the equipment that they need for yours and that they understand it that they can execute it well and although there are benefits to seeing a product that they've made for someone else, of course, no two products are identical.
Factory sourcing is very much like matchmaking, just because it was good for someone else doesn't mean that it's going to be good for you, which is why factory recommendations don't tend to be that helpful. Again a bigger topic for another day.
Essentially with this sample, we want to make sure that we're getting a sample of our product from the factory before we commit to a big order with them. So yes, there is the downside because we're going to have to pay for this sample. But in my opinion the reward massively outweighs the cost of that because it just gives us that bit of confidence that we're happy to move forward with this Factory and basically give them more money in the form of a large order and let's face it. It's better to know now if this factory is no good or can't produce what you want than after you've paid them a deposit for a massive order.
So yes, we do need to pay for the samples. But yes, it’s something that that is worth doing in the long run.
Is that what you're expecting?
Did you budget having samples into your forecast? If not don't panic at least, you know about it now and it's something that we can move forward with. If you're struggling with anything else on the manufacturing side or even the marketing side, design side, or the sample products budgeting I'd love to know let me know in the comments and this can always be considered for a topic in a future video.
These videos are out every Tuesday, so there's always content that we need to fill. So by all means I would love for you to ask me a question.
If you really excited to start your fashion brand but feeling a bit nervous because you actually don't know what you're doing, I'd love to help you. Let's chat!
My products and services have helped a ton of people go from zero to launch with their fashion brand, even though they'd had no industry experience whatsoever. So I'd love to chat to you, just click here to arrange something! You can just let me know a little bit about what your challenges are so I can try and help you overcome those and we can schedule a chat if it's something that I can help with.
I'd love to hear from some of you soon! Have a great week and I'll see you in the next video.
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