Why you should use a buying house for garments sourcing?

December 21, 2021
Posted by: admin
Categories: Funding trends, Uncategorized

No matter where you are in the world, competition is fierce, and your business is always under pressure to find value. Keeping costs down is essential, and that means sourcing your garments from overseas suppliers, but while there are significant cost advantages, finding the right suppliers brings a range of new challenges too.

Sourcing Challenges

In unfamiliar markets your procurement team may struggle to find the best suppliers. Many leading producers remain relatively local in terms of marketing and having specialized knowledge of specific markets is essential to know where the best solutions can be found. Language and cultural differences can make negotiations time consuming, leaving scope for errors that can cause difficulties further down the line.

In terms of sustainability and brand protection, it is also crucial to know what kind of company you are dealing with. From the working conditions to the materials and more, there are so many variables, and dealing with a supplier that gets these things wrong can have a significant impact on your brand reputation later on.

The Practical issues of Distance

The distance, not to mention continued difficulty in travel, make in-person inspections of factories, products and so on both costly and time consuming. This is especially true of factory visits, which are necessary to ensure sustainable, ethical production, as well as the basics such as the supplier having the resources to meet your volume needs.

Beyond this, maintaining quality control, organizing logistics and managing orders across distance and cultures can present issues too, all taking up significant management resources and reducing the cost advantage. Quality control is of particular importance here, as quality inspections really need to be carried out on premises before orders are shipped to you, so that issues can be rectified before that expense is incurred. However, having a quality inspector on site is impractical, happily there is an alternative.

A Buying House Change Everything

By using a buying house all of these challenges can be avoided. A buying house brings together local experience with suppliers and an understanding of your needs and market, giving you a bridge between your business and the supplier.

With local knowledge, buying house experts can quickly identify suitable providers to meet your needs, ensuring that you have access to the very best options at all times. Because buying house agents are genuinely local to the suppliers, they can also carry out due diligence and factory visits on your behalf. You can avoid the expense of sending a team, and with the travel challenges caused by the pandemic a local agent of a buying house may be the only way to physically inspect the factory at all.

In addition to site visits, a buying house can provide a wealth of services that cover every aspect of the supply chain, including location specific services such as organizing quality inspections, as well as the complex processes such as order management and logistics. With local knowledge and a dedication to your best interests, these difficult processes can be streamlined and organized quickly and easily.

By providing a bridge between the suppliers and your business, and importantly, your business culture and the supplier’s culture, problems of language, expectations and evaluation disappear. With a buying house, you can have the best of both worlds, a cost-effective supply of quality garments, while dealing with a business that understands the needs and expectations of your business, who speak your language and are committed to providing a fantastic service.

Conclusion

A buying house essentially gives you a local representative wherever you are sourcing garments from, and you can use as much or as little of their expertise as you wish. By providing the complete solution though, your supply chain management can be simplified beyond that of local suppliers, allowing you to focus on your business success rather than procurement and logistics.

how can we help you?