Quality control is an important aspect of the garment production process. For importers of wholesale or custom-made garments from abroad, garment quality control is crucial.
Today’s post shows information related to clothing quality inspection. Let’s take a look.
Why do you need a garment quality inspection?
For clothing importers, strict quality control in the garment industry is important.
One of the primary aims is to ensure quality before clothing enters the market. By conducting comprehensive checks on clothing products at different stages, you can ensure that the garments you receive fully comply with quality standards. This proactive inspection can reduce the likelihood of customer complaints and returns.
Imagine if you find an irresponsible manufacturer, who shows high-quality samples, but then switches to lower-grade materials during mass production. Without quality inspection, once the products reach consumers, it could lead to a significant number of negative reviews, thereby affecting reputation.
Additionally, the importance of quality checks includes verifying whether the clothing meets industry and regulatory standards. In the textile industry, each country must adhere to strict regulations and quality standards. Non-compliance could result in products being refused entry by customs, shipment delays, or even legal disputes.
Factors to consider in apparel quality control
Generally speaking, the inspection agency will issue a garment quality control report. It mainly includes the following key contents:
Fabric Quality
Fabric quality inspection typically covers various aspects, and common ones include:
Appearance Quality: This aspect primarily inspects whether the fabric has issues like color variations, spots, stains, defects, broken yarns, and more. It also evaluates the uniformity of the fabric, ensuring there are no noticeable stripes, mottling, or defects. Pantone postcards are often used to compare colors for consistency.
Size and Stability: Quality inspectors usually use a ruler or tape measure to carefully compare the size to see if it is consistent with the requirements. Also, you need to consider fabric size changes after processes like washing, drying, or other treatments.
Shrinkage and Deformation: This focuses on determining if the fabric experiences shrinkage, deformation, or contraction after washing or heat treatments. Especially with fabrics like cotton or linen, shrinkage is an important consideration. You have to test to make sure the shrinkage is acceptable.
Color Fastness Test: For dyed garments, such as denim jeans, it’s important to check whether the fabric maintains color stability under conditions like washing, friction, or exposure to sunlight. This helps avoid severe color fading issues.
Decorations and Accessories
Decorative elements such as beads, embroidery, and ribbons, as well as accessories like zippers and buttons, are elements that give clothing a unique style and personality. However, they also directly impact the overall quality and durability of the product.
Check if they are securely attached to the clothing to avoid falling off or damage during use.
Stitching Quality
Good sewing quality, such as the uniformity of sewing threads, tension, and stitch density, ensures the stability and durability of seams. In addition, the accuracy of seam placement and alignment, the secure attachment of buttons and buttonholes, as well as the proper trimming and finishing, are all key elements to ensure the neat appearance and durability of the clothing. All of these aspects need to be thoroughly inspected.
Label and Packaging
You should not overlook the accuracy of labels. It’s essential to ensure that information such as size, composition, washing instructions, and brand identification is correct and clearly visible on the labels. Additionally, labels should be securely attached to the garments.
As for packaging, it must effectively safeguard the product’s condition during transportation. Furthermore, ensuring that all necessary information is present on the packaging is important. The environmental friendliness of packaging materials should also be considered, making sure they do not have any negative impact on product quality.
In addition to the above, you also need to consider compliance issues for your specific clothing category and target market. I will explain them in the following sections.
Standards and regulations in the garment industry
The garment industry is subject to various standards and regulations to ensure the safety, quality, and compliance of clothing products. Some of the key standards and regulations in the garment industry are:
ISO
ISO is short for International Organization for Standardization. It develops globally accepted standards to ensure the quality, safety, and efficiency of products and services.
In the apparel industry, ISO involves several standards, such as ISO 105-B02 for evaluating the color fastness of textiles, and ISO 12945 for the abrasion resistance test of textiles.
AATCC
AATCC stands for the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists. It develops testing methods and standards for textiles and apparel products. AATCC plays a significant role in the textile and apparel industry by providing guidance on colorfastness, fabric performance, chemical testing, and other relevant aspects to ensure the quality and safety of textile products.
CPSIA
CPSIA is a U.S. regulation that sets safety standards for consumer products, including children’s clothing. It establishes limits on certain chemicals (e.g. lead and phthalate content) in textiles and mandates third-party testing for children’s products.
ASTM
ASTM stands for the American Society for Testing and Materials. It publishes technical standards for a wide range of products and industries, including textiles and garments.
In the garment industry, ASTM standards are used for testing and evaluating fabric properties, garment performance, flammability, and other critical parameters.
REACH
REACH is a regulation of the European Union that addresses the production and use of chemical substances in products, including textiles. It aims to protect human health and the environment by regulating the use of hazardous chemicals.
GOTS
GOTS stands for Global Organic Textile Standard, which is an international certification standard for textiles and clothing. It ensures that textiles meet strict organic and environmental standards during production, including fiber cultivation and treatment, processing, manufacturing, packaging, labeling, and other links.
If you need to import 100% organic cotton clothing, your supplier needs to issue this certification and mark it on the label.
OEKO-TEX
The standards and requirements of OEKO-TEX certification cover the ecological aspects of textiles, ensuring that textiles and clothing products do not contain harmful substances and are harmless to humans and the environment.
It is not a mandatory legal requirement, but a voluntary sign. Products that have obtained OEKO-TEX certification can be affixed with the “OEKO-TEX Standard 100” logo on the label to convey the environmental protection and safety of the product to consumers.
JingSourcing's professionalism in apparel QC
As a leading sourcing company in China, JingSourcing has helped 4000+ importers wholesale and customize all kinds of things from China, including various types of clothing.
Many importers in the clothing business trust us for many reasons. First, we work with experienced and reliable clothes manufacturers. They all have passed strict factory audits and have the related certificates required for garment material certification.
Secondly, we have a professional quality inspection team, proficient in clothing quality checking standards. In the process of clothing production, we follow the AQL sampling standard and strictly control the quality of samples and mass products.
Our QC method is also very flexible. We will communicate with you first to understand your inspection requirements and focus points and focus on problems you care about, such as stitching defects, fabric defects, inconsistent sizes, etc. During the quality inspection process, we accept video communication and ask whether you can accept each defect, so as to improve the inspection efficiency.
If you are an Amazon seller and have strict requirements on packaging, we will assist you in completing labeling and checking packaging issues according to Amazon regulations.
In addition, compared with other large inspection agencies, we provide more detailed test reports, not just simple pass-or-fail judgments. If a non-conformity is found, we will contact the manufacturer to help you remanufacture and ensure that the problem is resolved.
