Whether you are a new store or an established name, product quality needs to be at the forefront of your mind, particularly in the competitive wholesale women’s clothing market. Defining quality management might be different depending on your store’s needs. For example, some people might favour just-in-time methods of providing inventory for your store, while others might expect to reliably order in large quantities. Both criteria impact your perception of the vendor’s quality management. In this article, we are going to discuss how to develop your own criteria, establish quality controls internally, use vendor reputation to match your business needs with market realities, and how logistics can impact your perception of product quality.
Vetting Vendors Based on Your Criteria
When you measure your vendors’ quality, you need to consider what you think quality means. Of course, there are industry standards, but what matters most to your store and its operations? When sourcing wholesale women’s clothing, you need to look at vendor capabilities through the lens of your business needs. This is your essential starting point for evaluating capabilities and assessing a relevant quality score that makes sense to you. Only until you know what matters to your firm can you begin the difficult task of vetting suppliers based on perceived levels of quality.
Quality Control
Once you have established what matters to your firm in terms of quality, you need to align your vendor selection with those criteria. This should be easy to do. Most vendors supply information about their process or are willing to answer questions about it. To make the most of this process, develop relevant questions beforehand (including follow-up questions) and use those as a basis for moving forward with your research.
Vendor Reputation
Beyond asking vendors about their processes, you can also turn to your fellow storefronts to research quality control and vendor reputations. This can usually be done through reviews and one-on-one discussions with people working in your space. The best part about working online in terms of owning a storefront is that there is enough room for everyone, and you will be surprised to find that most other stores are more than happy to talk about their vendor relationships, especially if they are distinctly good or bad. For public review sites, you will need to balance objectivity with some of the more positive reviews. Again, focus on what matters to your company and go from there.
Logistics
Underpinning the entire process is how the product gets to your door and on your shelves. This process is called logistics. What you need to keep in mind here is that the best firm with the best processes will not be able to help you if they cannot get products to you in a timely or affordable fashion. You need to keep shipping, shipping options, and financing options at the front of your mind. Financing is how you pay for your items and ties into shipping in that it will let you coordinate your budgeting with purchasing. Taking these two aspects into consideration will help you determine what high-quality firms are capable of meeting your business needs.
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