Quality and Learning

After a small one week break to attend a cousins wedding (and meet my folks and innumerable relatives) I came back to work, only to find another Quality claim from my Buyer. As I have written earlier, ensuring quality of goods whose production we are managing is part of our job and I /We are doing our best.. but its enevitable that something slips by. This time it was a beautiful knitted embroidered ladies top. We were breaking our backs and brains to ensure the delivery of this style in time and quality of the heavily sequinned embroidery.. and ended up not noticing some holes in the back and sleeves! Such a disaster, after such hardwork!.
After a pretty restless and dejected day, I figured out learnings I ought to print in bold letters and put in my office wall.
1. Chose the right garment for the right producers... guys specialising in High fashion woven styles for scandinavian markets cannot do embroidered knits, as much as producers specialising in mens cotton shirts are capable of doing womens chiffon dress! -- i just remember that we have two womens dresses running with producer specialising in womens handbags, and losing sleep over the thought of quality of production! But sometimes its unavoidable as we offer styles designed and developed by one producer to Buyer and once chosen its not ethical to take that style and give to another producer, just becuase we believe the second producer is better at such garments.
2. Try as far as possible, not to deliver goods under pressure. This is one golden rule, though very hard to avoid. Several times, the delivery dates of goods are overshot by producer and Buyer is restless to get the goods. So we as agents dont have enough time to check the goods properly and with a calm mind.
3. Get more experienced and more patient professional dedicated to quality. As i am currently juggling various roles of managing, marketing, and checking quality... its not an easy job and somethings better be left to professionals... though it could be expensive, it will hopefully pay off in the long run!

Officially Delhi

Its been close to 3 months since I/We as NGS closed out Mumbai and moved to Delhi. As I am operating still from home, I keep telling the producers that our office is in Mumbai but are shifting to delhi. Well, thats done and I can now say We WORK FROM Delhi. I have just signed up for a cool office Near Nehru Place in Kalkaji.
Next step, is to get a smart Merchandiser cum Quality incharge.

Most entrepreneurs when they start are a one man company working from home.. but then they slowly and steadily grow. Then comes the classic challenge. The problem I see for an entrepreneur is from running the business himself to being able to develop employees who can takeover and manage. This is a critical step and very important, as it can make or break a company (almost), on the positive side it involves switching from spending 90% of your time managing tactical operations to getting atleast 50% of the time free to invest into Strategic issues...while the employee(s) takes care of the operations... also if capable the employee(s) will add his talent to your strategy to make you/your company stronger...and on the negative side the customers could lose their personal contact with you and could be mishandled by the employee. I think its also why most times, a company started by 2 or 3 partners has a better success rate than by one individual. As one partner takes care of operations -- getting the delivery done or coding and debugging that software program ..while the other can look out at how to shape up business, target marketing and create expansion strategy. Several times, a business started by an individual remains a one man show... as he/she grows comfortable with a certain status-quo where he has a set number of buyers/customers and he is not able to transition them to an employee and go look for new ones. Its sometimes ..inertia..while others it could be an individuals ability ..or sometimes even luck.

Stop being a wimp

Stop being a wimp and do some god damn marketing!
Motto of the month :)
The last statement of the last post was really ..silly

Italian

I am already half in love with Italian cinema after watching, Cinema Paradiso. one of my first ever International movie (besides hollywood) ever, some 4 years ago. After a long time, some events have conjured up to lead me much more deeper not only into italian cinema, but italy itself. I was having an emotional low, and switched on the Oscar winning "Mediterraneo" (my 3rd after Malena) ... and the first dialogue is ...."in times like these escape is the only way to stay alive...and to continue dreaming". (HENRY LOBORIT)! I am beginning to dream about new horizons.. but feeling hesitant... its been a while!

Living the life of a businessman!

Work on sundays.. !!! weekend of in midweek!

A quote which always inspires me

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people

-- George Bernard Shaw

Quality of Fashion Clothing

Quality is a term which has always fascinated me. Beginning with the book Zen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance (where I found the simplest and most sensible definition, Quality means "peace of mind"). Since joining the business, I have been undertaking quality inspections to check the Fitting, colors, styling etc of the Fashion Clothes that we produce... its been close to 2 years and I still feel uncomfortable the day I need to go to a factory to check the packed goods.

I feel its a big challenge to understand the styling of the garment, especially when you make everything from a Woman's Evening Dress to simple cotton shirt. Each garment has its own aspects which defines its style. We usually start with the standard Measurement charts that we receive from the Buyer which sets out how much the length, heigh, width of skirt, armhole, bust, full body etc should be. Though these measuremnts can help you make a pattern, its just not easy to measure the same dimensions once the Garment is done by laying them flat on a table. Unfortunately, in India there are very few Girls/women working in garment factories (most stitching is done by men, as opposed to women in China, Russia, France etc) , even if there is a woman she probably never has and never will wear the kind of dress we make. Below is a picture of a dress we make, next to the way an indian woman is dressed.

If we had some Girls in the factory, it would just be easy to chose girls in different sizes, ask them to try on a few pieces and see how they fit. Since there are no girls, we try the second best option which is to put them on dummies. Several times though the piece might look fine on a dummy and bad on a lady, thats becuase when as an inspector you put the Garment on dummy you can adjust it as you like, but on a girl the garment just has a natural way of fitting which cant easily be messed with.

Inspite of the above limitations 90% of times we manage to get the Quality correct. And with my past experience I believe the times when the quality was right were the times when I looked at the garment on the dummy, made some measuremnts and felt some "peace of mind"... if my mind starts getting confused and restless, there is a problem with the garment. Unfortunately we do business in a country and industry where the Quality standards and understanding havs huge variations, so a typical day of checking would be 1 hr of checking and 6 hrs of explaining this confusion/restlessness in my mind to the producer.

Ofcourse, there have also been several instances where I chose to ignore this restlessness and ended up getting into trouble and having goods rejected. WHich leaves a big hole in your mind and pocket!

Stuff works

That white dress the girl is wearing... was made by our company for this Brand.

Another one, this is pure silk.. and pure magic :)