Its always amazing how many large companies that buy from factories overseas never even visit their factory once. At CAPX, we understand the importance and have been visiting our factory partners and strengthening those relationships at least once every year since 1993.
Why?
Because it is the right thing to do, naturally supports continuous improvement (kaizen), and is crucial to long-term success.
1. First and foremost: Ethical Labor Practices:
In-person visits demonstrate personal commitment to ensuring that factories operate under fair labor practices, avoiding exploitation and poor working conditions.
There are trade organizations and labor organizations overseas that affect the production and delivery of caps. The more you know, the better your production is, but more importantly - the better off your factory and its staff are.
Confidential interviews with workers help us learn what they care about most and how to improve the quality of their job.
2. Quality Control:
Personal inspections help us learn the enormity of the tasks we ask our supplier to perform, understand the processes involved, and helps overcome any problems or defects that arise. If you can't protect the brand at the point of production, customers can't trust you to consistently deliver quality products.
3. Improved Communication:
If you plan to have a long life as a brand and a business partnership, building trust and knowing the personnel side of your partners is vital.
Face-to-face meetings with local managers and line workers improves their understanding of what we are trying to do as well as increases loyalty and motivation. It allows us to pass on our passion for the product and the importance of getting it right.
Visiting makes it easier to resolve language and cultural confusion or language barriers more effectively than remote communication. Often in other countries, ‘Yes’ may actually mean ‘No (but I don’t want to tell you)' or ‘Maybe’ could mean 'It's probably possible' or it could also mean 'Maybe it can be done on a small scale but not a large scale'.
4. Supply Chain Optimization:
Gaining deeper insights into local culture enhances negotiation, risk mitigation, and management strategies.
On-the-ground presence helps to better understand local logistics and supply chain challenges. Local politics may actually determine if your product gets shipped on time or not.
Also, sometimes factories don't accurately understand the relative importance of specific fabrics, threads, colors, etc so they may not stock, or may overstock, based on their perceived future need.
5. Innovation and Improvement:
Direct observation of production processes can reveal inefficiencies and opportunities for innovation. This happens on almost every trip to the factory.
There have been instances where we observed the product development process as a new design was being tested. The defective products that came from the production errors actually gave us other legitimate ideas for new products and manufacturing methods.
Visiting the factory is not only important but it is crucial. The advantages are huge and continue to grow each year. As an added bonus, working closely in unison with other cultures enriches the lives of everyone involved and offers unique opportunities for growth and learning.
