Clothing quality inspection: When will the actual "inspection"

The business club reported on September 3th that fines are lower than the detection fee. When many garment companies are trying hard to think about how to make their own brand winning highs, whether they ignore the real consumers behind those busy planning strategies What are the concerns?

China is a big country in textile production, but only 45% of the companies send clothing products to domestic commodity inspection and fiber inspection systems every year, and 5% of domestic private commercial and third party fair testing accounts for about 5%. In other words, the detection rate of products in the domestic textile market is less than 50%, and there are numerous cases where textiles directly enter the circulation field without authoritative inspection.

Taking Tianjin as an example, only 10% of garment companies send garment products to the national quality inspection center for quality inspection and testing, which means that 90% of companies disregard the inspection of the quality inspection department. This ratio allows many people to listen incredible. Many manufacturers only verbal commitment to quality and safety, but there is no written proof that guarantees product safety. Such apparel products are being sent to various places for sale from many manufacturers.

Why do so many garment manufacturers have to evade the quality inspection of the national quality inspection department? To this end, Tang Xiangtao, deputy director of the National Garment Quality Supervision and Inspection Center (Tianjin) and vice president of the Tianjin Textile and Apparel Research Institute, gave detailed answers.

Tang Xiangtao said: "Assume that a garment manufacturer will send each batch of garments to a national quality inspection agency for testing. The crude annual cost of testing will probably be 400,000 to 500,000 yuan. Such a fee may be acceptable to many large plants. Accepted, but for many small garment factories is a small sum of expenditure.In order to save the 'expensive' spending, many small factories have to take the risk, without clothing quality inspection directly to the clothing into the market. In their own words, if they are lucky, they will be safe and save money for a year. If the 'luck' is not good, they are reported by consumers, and the quality inspection department has found out that there are serious hidden dangers of insecurity. The country will only do so. The company's fines are 5-10 thousand yuan, which is obviously less than the 50 million yuan inspection fee."

"Of course, many clothing companies with well-known brands will still conduct clothing testing, because after all, it is not easy to make the brand bigger and stronger. The company deeply understands that it is necessary to protect the reputation of the brand name. Shame. Offensive Jiangshan, Jiangshan difficult.” Tang Xiangtao said with deep feelings, “But small businesses do not pay much attention to brand maintenance.

The monitoring of clothing quality is mainly composed of self-quality control, national mandatory sampling inspection and industrial and commercial sampling inspection in the operation of the company. Some large shopping malls will require the presence of third-party testing reports to enter the brand, while other apparel traders and foreign trade stores do not have much requirements for such third-party inspection reports. A person in charge of a company that has just opened a new clothing brand in Beijing revealed that the most basic monitoring link for clothing quality inspection is “proactive inspection” by the company. Many self-requiring brands often carry out inspections for each garment. , but it is also limited to money detection; and not every manufacturer, every brand can be sent for inspection, because the test requires a lot of money, for companies such as their start-up brand does not have much capital, This money has been considered "astronomical."

We can reduce the cost of multiple parties in the dark China's existing testing agencies are broadly divided into three types: state-owned testing agencies, private testing agencies and foreign investment testing agencies. From the perspective of costs, the testing costs of state-owned testing organizations are all clearly marked, transparent, and there are no discounts according to national regulations. Many private inspection organizations can use competitive costs to reduce testing costs. Undoubtedly, it has brought certain competitive pressures on the national testing agencies; and foreign-invested testing agencies have high fees because they have international certifications, because many foreign-invested testing agencies have internationally recognized certifications, which sounds even more “international”.

Tang Xiangtao said that taking Tianjin's clothing inspection as an example, the detection cost of a piece of fabric for cashmere sweater is between 400-700 yuan. If the fabric is darker in color and easier to fade, the cost of testing will be higher, if the color is lighter, the testing cost It will be lower. However, for the same fabrics, a quality inspection at a daily inspection agency in Tianjin will require a fee of 1,330 yuan and no discount. The reason given by the Japanese agency is that their certification is recognized by the whole world. If there is any dispute in the future, this is protection.

Such a high cost of testing has deterred many small and medium-sized enterprises. Competition in the current market is fierce, and the price level is also a bargaining chip for corporate competition. In order to save the cost of quality inspections, many companies set up quality inspection departments in their own factories and have quality inspectors. Tang Xiangtao said: "Each garment company's testing department only tests the quality of its own brand, and generally after the completion of the test, the label of the clothes will be marked with 'qualified products'. This is called the 'first party' in the testing process. The laboratory's quality is unilaterally guaranteed by the company."

After the production of the product, the part of the receiving party that conducts the quality inspection of the garment is called the "secondary laboratory," and the receiving party plays the role of supervision. The national quality inspection department and other private inspection agencies are in the "third-party laboratory". As the testing department of an independent party, the inspection results issued by the national quality inspection department do not favor any party, and they have credit validity and legal validity.

In order to save costs, many companies’ clothing products have only gone through the first link - "first-party laboratories" put the products on the market, but many small and medium-sized enterprises' quality inspection equipment and machinery equipment with the national quality inspection agencies Can not be compared, the results of its test results appear untrue also occur from time to time, which is why many clothing brands are now the quality and safety issues, and even many internationally renowned brands can not escape the law network, one of the reasons for the country's continuous notification.

According to the reporter’s understanding, in the clothing inspection, there are roughly two links, fabric inspection and garment submission. Clothing inspections are concerned with external quality, such as sewing work, etc. Some of these issues can be judged by the consumer either at the time of purchase or after use. The intrinsic quality of the fabric inspection link is a difficult or even blind spot for consumers to judge. Such as fabric composition, color fastness and so on. If the inspection fabric does not meet the standards, usually the manufacturer will replace it and send it again. Adding such costs to apparel products will increase costs and put more pressure on SMEs.

Embarrassment on both sides of fast-moving consumer goods There are many apparel brands that have a dominant consumption concept of fast-moving apparel on the market. The most prominent feature of these fast-disappearing clothing brands is that the styles are updated quickly, and the number of garments per paragraph is small. Many of the "fast fashion" apparel dealers have promised to have new products in the 12th quarter. Even if there are more than ten or twenty new products on the market each week, if such products are sent to testing organizations, they will delay the time for new listings. And because of the many styles and the number of inspections to be added, the cost of testing is relatively higher.

With such concerns, many fast-moving consumer apparel products have evaded this aspect of quality testing. Why do many internationally-known fast-food brands frequently have quality door incidents? I believe these factors are also considered one of the reasons.

Tang Xiangtao said: “With the National Garment Quality Supervision and Inspection Center (Tianjin) as an example, the quality inspection fee for apparel products under 500 items is 10 yuan/piece, and the quality inspection fee for 500 to 1000 garment products is 15 yuan/piece. , And the inspection time of the quality inspection department is basically about 10-20 days, and the fastest is 3 days. For many fast-moving consumer goods, if you delay listing, you will lose countless costs. If not, After going through quality inspection and listing directly, even if quality problems are detected, the amount of fines is lost compared to the amount of “delayed” quality inspections.