Imports Oriental Blog

Danny Coyle

Steven Weng

Most knitwear is manufactured from April to August in time for the Fall/Winter seasons in the northern hemisphere. (Late production continues through to October). The push to get large volumes produced in this short period puts pressure on every aspect of production. It can be difficult to get knitwear orders completed in a timely fashion if orders are not placed before May of each year.

Many of these principles hold true for manufacturing other products as well.

I’ve listed some of the potential areas for delays here and in Part 2 of this article.

1. Sampling

Most sampling should be done in advance of the busy period, however, the Pre-Production (PP) samples must be done immediately before production. Usually the PP samples that are given to the customer are not done on the same looms (or even in the same factory) as the actual production. These sampling looms are often operated by technicians who are superior to those that operate the production looms.  This means that they can push the samples out faster, but the quality is not indicative of the quality on the actual production line.  Furthermore, these looms used for sampling are also making samples for other orders at the same time, so you may have to wait for those samples to be done first, before they make your samples. Normally the samples will take 7-10 days to do. Delays here can add 2-3 days to the sampling stage of the project.

2. Yarn Dyeing

When dyeing lab-dips and dyeing the production yarn, there will be delays. Most delays at this stage are due to queuing up behind all the orders that were placed before yours.  The dyeing factory may promise you a delivery date for your lab-dips, but this delivery date is never fixed. Most factories will tell you that dyeing will be complete 30-45 days after the color is approved.  Remember that a top dye yarn will always take longer. Upon receiving your lab-dips, the factory may give you a timetable for the yarn dyeing, but this is not a reliable timeline, especially during the busy season.

To be frank, the whole dyeing process during the busy season is a crap-shoot. You never know how many people are ahead of you in the queue, and you never know how good your guanxi is compared to the guys in front or behind you.  So delays are inevitable. In extreme circumstances the delays can push production back 2-4 weeks.

3. Knitting

Again, during the busy season, your knitting factory may have other orders in production at the same time as your order. Production on your order will not begin until the orders ahead of yours are complete. Delays at this stage can go from a few days to a few weeks. If you allow 45-60 days for this stage of production your order should stay on time. Our production period is normally 30-45 days after the PP sample is approved.

During the busy season production is going as fast as possible on every order the factory is working on.  They are trying to make as much money as possible by processing as many pieces as possible. Factories have no spare time on the looms, and workers are working 10-12 hour shifts at their looms. Once they start knitting your order, you must make sure that the factory is concentrating on your order.  Sometimes they will only use half the looms to process your order.  This will also cause delays because the factory originally calculated the delivery time based on full production capacity.  It is important that you physically travel to the factory to make sure they are working on your order.  If they are not, you will face delays.

In the next installment of this piece, we will look at other factors that can delay your knitwear order and some ways to keep your order on schedule. Click here for Part 2.