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!