Everyone has a different level of risk that they can personally handle in the development and manufacturing process. Figuring out the level of risk you are comfortable with is a big part of developing your business and strategies.
I personally have found that the small costs it takes to ensure great quality completely outweigh the potential colossal costs of having a production run of poor quality. I run my business this way with “The 4 Steps.”
You could skip approving embroidery on your product. That seems easy enough right? Put the embroidery on the left chest, and match the color of the shirt. Easy, right? Not really….
What could go wrong (and I have seen this happen several times), is that you receive an entire production lot of shirts with the embroidery way up on the left shoulder or down on the left side. Or too low so that it is closer to the belly, the color is off, and the quality of the embroidery is poor.
Now you have lost the money and resources for an entire production;potentially thousands of dollars. In turn, you only saved yourself 1 or 2 days, and a couple of hundred dollars during development. If you do the math it doesn’t seem worth it.
On the flip side, sometimes that method works out just great for some businesses. They can plug along for a while but I guarantee, in the end, it will cause financial pain and a process with approval steps will get put in place inevitably.
Not all development and manufacturers will require approval and samples for each step. Skipping steps is super tempting when timelines run short, and budgets seem tight, but I’m a firm believer that it is rarely worth it. When manufacturing you may need to be your own advocate to ensure you get the product you want.
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