Abstract

Sample development and approval process of kids and ladies garments in export oriented knit garments factories for foreign buyers have been virtually observed to find out the critical lacking points of sample developers, merchandising department of factories and different causes of its delay approval of buying house merchandising department. The buyer asked for different types of sample during order confirmation to bulk production and requested to the factory merchandisers for sending the sample in a specific date to maintain the goals of order completion wherever merchandisers tried to fulfil the requirements. Sending date of sample from the concern of factory merchandisers and approval date of sample from the concern of buying house merchandisers were noted as per buyer’s details and order details of different products like T-Shirt LS (Kids), Tops (Ladies), Tops & Bottom LS (Ladies) and Shorts & Skirt (Ladies). Sample development and approval process considering sample making time and sample approval time of a specific foreign buyer of Europe country was deeply studied in a knit garments factory and studied the sample related problem during sample making as well as investigated the time of sample approval. Significant outputs were found both in technological and marketing points of view which are 1) Fabric problem, color shade matching of fabric, azo & formaldehyde presence in both fabric dyeing and printing in sample stage, shade matching of accessories & sewing thread, seam puckering, sewing quality, Shrinking of garments, sample finishing & unskilled technician in sample department were affected the time of sample making and sample approval. 2) Due to technical limitation of photo printing in sample where customers were making demand of actual view & shade matching of photo print, but in real case it was impossible because of technical limitation by the factory concern which was taking more time of sample making and approval. 3) Color shade matching in printing was not possible like as the matching of fabric color matching which was not accepted by the buying house merchandiser but practically no spectrophotometer machine was using to match the color matching of print design which was taking more time for sample making and sample approval. 4) Sometimes buying house merchandiser was unable to understand the sample making and it was solved by the effective discussion between the experienced holder person of factory & buying house merchandiser. Time in sample making and approval affected the confidence level of customer and order quantity of bulk production. Among all the order of Company-A, Order No: 123561 took minimum time for sample approval and Order No: 123928 took maximum time for sample approval. The m/c layout of the sample section in company-A was also investigated and found not in order, from where we first collected data when worked with merchandising department of Company-A. The same data was observed for company-B during the sample development and approval process in knit garments for this case study.

Keywords: Foreign buyer; Knit garments; Merchandising; Sampling; Sample approval