With apparel finishing, “good enough” is never good enough. Let’s ensure your units are retail ready.
Blog
Found a wrench in the works?
You think of everything, and yet…
You strategize and plan. Check the details, big and small. Suddenly a wrench is thrown into the works, and everything grinds to a halt. For one of our customers, this “wrench in the works” was a full-size delivery truck!
Simple label swap reaps $1.1 million
Thanks to apparel relabeling, DC manager’s “light-bulb moment” pays off!
Hole-y Truck, Batman! What Now?”
“Ker-Splash!”
With the next fashion season right around the corner, 18,000 units of specialized apparel arrived at a major retailer’s warehouse with a terrible musty odor. It turns out the shipping container had holes in the roof. Hole-y Truck!
Baseball tees need a triple play to save the day.
A new winning season is nearly here! Excitement mounts to a feverish
pitch. Faithful fans are ready to buy their club’s baseball performance
t-shirts. Retailers know this is RIGHT TIME to sell sports team merchandise. To
meet demand, a large retailer ordered 34,000 baseball performance t-shirts,
which retail at $30 each.
But wait – the “umpire” (AKA,
Quality Control Manager) announces an error.
Darn It’s Warehouse + Refurbishment Department support retailer’s custom orders
When buying men’s pants, you can choose an inseam of 30”, 32”, 34” and so forth. But what if you want a 33” inseam? And what if you want belt loops? Thanks to Darn It’s Apparel Repair Department, our customer – a men’s pant retailer/wholesaler – DOES offer this highly customized service.
Customs Delay Becomes Darn It’s Problem…
“Customs” is practically a 4-letter word in the apparel industry. When Customs holds up your shipment, it can be your worst nightmare. Nagging questions keep you awake at night: Will your shipment arrive in time for the sales promotion? Will the delay impact revenue targets?
Overcoming impossible odds to pick/pack 55,000 coats
In the apparel industry, some items are small and easy to manage. Wallets and wristlets come to mind. Other items – such as bulky winter coats – require significant square footage. Plus, the sheer bulk makes it challenging to process the goods and pack shipments. Thankfully, at Darn It! Distribution, we have plenty of space in our Apparel Warehouse and highly trained employees who provide value-added services.
“!Dios mio! We need tri-lingual labels!”
An online retailer planned to sell 7,000 baseball caps, at $35 each, to residents in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. To comply with international laws, all information on the labels must be in three languages: English, French, and Spanish.
Apparel Inspection and Re-Labeling – If it doesn’t fit, don’t quit!
In the world of apparel, back-to-school shopping isn’t just about kids. Mom will often outfit herself while outfitting her young students. This is a brief, critical selling season that no apparel retailer can afford to miss.
Whoa, snap!
Imagine being the distribution center manager and finding this: Boxes of Navy rain jackets sporting bright-yellow snaps instead of matching Navy snaps. With such an outlandish color scheme, this jacket would NEVER fly off the shelves. In fact, the only place the jacket would sell like hot cakes would be the University of Michigan. Unfortunately, this retailer was based in Seattle.
Don’t Slip into Fall like Jeff Did…It Will hurt!
Our President and Owner, Jeff Glassman, did slip and fall this summer and broke his wrist. After successful surgery, and two months of physical therapy, he should have full use of his arm and wrist. It’s just going to be a painful recovery.
These types of situations are always unfortunate and unexpected. Unexpected issues pop up every day in the retail and wholesale world. Especially during peak inbound season which is upon us. There are ways to minimize the pain and shorten the recovery period. Look below at ways to protect yourself as fall is approaching.
A vital link in the apparel supply chain: Third-party refurbishers help to get first-quality condition garments to market
The apparel industry’s supply chain crisscrosses the globe. In concept, that’s pretty exciting. In reality, it’s fraught with complications. Your supply chain can be interrupted due to all kinds of…
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For apparel e-retailers, a third-party refurbisher is a key member of your virtual team – and a lifesaver when things go wrong
Imagine this scenario: Black Friday is just a few weeks away. A critical shipment of garments you’re promoting has arrived on time, however, the units do not meet specifications. Now…
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Kitting Merchandise: 5 Creative Specialty Packaging Ideas To Spark Your Imagination (And Increase Sales)
Q: How can you perk up sales? A: Specialty promotional packages. Our customers – large general merchandise/apparel distributors and retailers – regularly ask Darn It! to kit specialty promotional packages…
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Busting at the seams! When you can’t stay on top of returns processing, unsold goods take up space – and don’t bring “ka-ching”
Whew! A peak season has passed. But now you walk into your Distribution Center and realize your hardworking team simply can’t catch up. Piles of returned items need to be inspected, refolded, and repackaged.
Disappearing Ink Still on Your Shirts?
Unless an apparel manufacturer is completely automated, the only way to set a pocket or mark for new buttons, or to sew any item onto a specific place on a garment is with a disappearing marking pen or pencil. They have used them for years and years.
Apparel Inspection: Everyone Is Entitled to One Good Scare
Happy Halloween and welcome to crunch time for all manufacturers, importers and retailers. This is the time when your “Just In Time Inventory” planning turns into “I NEED IT NOW” inventory planning.
Apparel Inspection: Bugs In Your Sweater?
We know that it is a very gross subject to write about and to even think about, but weren’t surprised when one of our customers called and asked us to inspect 12,000 sweaters due to some lovely dead insects inside some of the poly bags.
Garment Relabeling – There Goes My Cashmere Sweater!!
Have you ever mistakenly washed your beautiful cashmere sweater in the washing machine and then realized that your nice sweater will only fit your 5-year old now. It not only shrunk a few sizes, it shrunk an entire generation!!
Are the Patches Falling Off of Your Jeans?
What if the patches on 3,200 jeans were coming off? What if these jeans were high fashion (i.e. “cool”) jeans with very trendy patches that were peeling off? And to top it off, what if these jeans were on the home page of your website starting in two weeks?
Apparel Refurbisher: The Vital Link!
A Refurbisher partnership is the Vital Link to any supply chain. You may ask, what is An Apparel Refurbisher and is there such as word as Refurbisher? As discussed in the latest Blog in “Supply Chain Matters”, our CEO, Jeff Glassman, talks about why all retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers and importers should partner with a Refurbishment Company and how important it is to the supply chain of any company.
Apparel Warehousing – Add Value: Partner With Darn It!
Does your current warehouse operation have limited resources when you ask them to perform tasks “Outside the Box”? Apparel Warehousing or General Merchandise Warehousing customers of Darn It Inc. appreciate all of the many offerings contained under one roof.
Apparel Repair: Apparel Crisis Management
HEAD GAMES…What goes through our customer’s heads when faced with an issue with a shipment of apparel that they can’t put on the shelves or ship out to the consumer. They find that they are dealing with a major quality issue. Many words come to mind that we can’t put into print. The phrase that all of us hope comes to mind first is Darn It!
Apparel Repair: Is Your Clothing Bleeding
Have you ever received a shipment of garments where the white is discolored and looks very pink or blue? Or have your customers complained that your red sweaters are staining their other garments? If this occurs, call the Darn It Apparel Repair Team right away! We have many first aid remedies for these issues.
Apparel Repair: “Tis the Season for Smelly Garments!
Have you ever received a shipment of goods with a strong odor? Do the garments or other items have a mold or mildew smell. Do they smell like oil or gas? What do you do with it? What if the musty smelling goods represented $1.6 million dollars at retail and you can’t put them on the shelves as they would stink up the whole store? Darn It’s Apparel Repair team can help.
Apparel Relabeling – Are Your Bras Too Tight?
Of course, this is not just a problem for the women here…This can also be a problem for the men.
Apparel Repair: Examine Your Zipper!
What happens when your zipper gets stuck? Hopefully nothing got stuck in the process. But I guess you would get very frustrated. You would try and try to zip it up and down with no avail. You pull at the fabric, you pull at the zipper pull. Nothing.
Garment Inspection – Are Your Measurements out of Whack??
Has your quality control department ever brought to your attention that certain measurements in one of your shipments isn’t matching up with the original factory specifications? Is it that far off that you have to hold back the shipment and not send it off to the stores?