Sixty percent cotton, or was it sixty-five?
The fabric changed late. The brand approved a substitute jersey with a slightly different blend, and the new fabric supplier's test report says so. The tech pack was updated. The care label order had already been placed from the old tech pack, and nobody connected the two. Eight hundred tops are sewn and bagged with a composition label that is wrong.
The brand's QC spots it at final inspection. Every garment has to be opened, the label unpicked and replaced, repressed and rebagged.
The same facts are typed four times
Composition and care information passes through several hands, and each one retypes it. The label supplier works from an order form, not from the fabric record, so any change upstream has to be carried across by a person who remembers to.
- Fibre content comes from the fabric supplier and is copied into the tech pack.
- Care instructions come from the brand's standard text, sometimes by language, and are copied again.
- The label order form is filled in by hand, often from the first version of the tech pack.
- A fabric substitution updates the fabric record but nobody checks the labels.
- Label proofs come back as PDFs and are approved quickly because the line is waiting.
What a wrong label costs
Relabelling finished goods is slow, fiddly work that risks marking the garment. It is also the kind of error brands take seriously, because what is on the label is their responsibility to their customers, and they will check you more closely afterwards. What your labels must say is a matter for the brand and its advisers. What we can do is make sure the text they approved is the text that gets printed.
The problem grows with the number of brands. Each has its own care wording, its own symbol order, sometimes several languages on one label. A merchandiser handling five brands is keeping five sets of rules in their head, and the one that goes wrong is usually the brand they deal with least often.
A single label record per style
- Each approved fabric has a record holding its composition as stated on the supplier's test report or specification, with the document attached.
- Each style links to the fabrics it uses, so a composition change on the fabric shows up on every style that uses it.
- The brand's approved care text and symbols, and any translations they supply, are held as standard blocks per brand rather than typed each time.
- The label order for a style is generated from those records, in the format your label supplier asks for, for the merchandiser to check and send.
- When a label proof comes back, it is compared with the record, and any difference in fibre content, percentages or care text is highlighted before anyone approves it.
- If a fabric is substituted after labels are ordered, every affected label order is flagged immediately.
| Point of failure | Now | With a label record |
|---|---|---|
| Fabric substitution | Labels not revisited | Affected label orders flagged |
| Care text | Retyped per style | Brand's approved blocks reused |
| Label order form | Filled in by hand | Generated from the record |
| Proof approval | Quick look while the line waits | Differences highlighted |
Labels that match the garment
The merchandiser checks a generated label order against a record rather than composing one. A late fabric change, which happens all the time, triggers a label check without anyone having to remember. Proof approvals become a comparison with a clear list of differences. When the brand asks where a label's content came from, you can show the fabric document and the approved care text.
Does this ring a bell?
- You have relabelled finished garments.
- Composition is typed separately into the tech pack and the label order.
- Fabric substitutions do not trigger a label check.
- Care text is copied from old orders.
- Label proofs are approved under time pressure.