The short answer
- A fault found before decoration costs a blank; found after, it costs the job
- Count and check on arrival, not on the morning of the print
- Dye lot variation is real and only visible when garments are compared
- Suppliers have short claim windows — late claims get refused
- Assign the task to a person, or it happens inconsistently
Blanks arrive, get stacked, and are opened when the job is due. That is the sequence in most shops, and it is why so many problems surface at the worst possible moment — with a press set up, a deadline that afternoon, and no time to get replacements.
Why it pays
| Fault found | Costs you |
|---|---|
| On arrival | A call to the supplier |
| Before setup | A schedule adjustment |
| During the run | A stoppage and a re-count |
| After decoration | The blank, the labour and the deadline |
| By the customer | All of the above plus the relationship |
The step change is at decoration. Before it, a faulty blank is the supplier's problem; after it, the decoration is rarely covered and the shop absorbs the labour.
The supplier will replace a faulty shirt. Nobody will replace the hour you spent printing it.
The check
On every delivery
- Count against the packing slip, and the slip against your purchase order
- Confirm style number, not just the description
- Check colour name against what was ordered
- Confirm the size breakdown case by case
- Open cases and look — do not check by carton label alone
- Look for damp, crushing or transit damage
- Spot-check garments for holes, marks and stitching faults
Style number matters more than it sounds. Suppliers run similar-looking garments in the same colour name, and a substituted style with a different weight or cut will not match the previous order the customer is comparing it to.
Opening cases is the step most often skipped and the one that finds most problems. A carton labelled correctly can contain the wrong size, and nobody discovers that from the outside.
Dye lots
Garments dyed in different batches can vary in shade, and the variation is invisible until two are laid side by side. On a single order across multiple cases, that is enough to produce a complaint.
Handling it
- Compare garments from different cases against each other
- Check the lot number on the case labels where printed
- On a large order, keep lots together per size run
- Tell the customer before printing if lots differ visibly
- Keep a sample from each lot with the job record
Dye lot variation also affects repeat orders months apart, which is why a reorder of the same style can look subtly different. Saying so in advance turns it into a known characteristic rather than a fault.
Shortages and substitutions
Two situations that need a decision on the day rather than a discovery at setup.
Shortages. Confirm whether the missing pieces are backordered or cancelled, get a date, and decide immediately whether to short-ship, source elsewhere or delay — the choice depends on what you promised and when.
Never print an incomplete order and deal with the balance later without telling the customer. A partial delivery agreed in advance is a service; the same delivery unannounced is a failure.
Substitutions. Suppliers sometimes ship an equivalent style without asking. Whether it is acceptable is the customer's call, not yours, and printing it because it looked close enough is how a whole run becomes a reprint.
Recording it
Log against the job
- Date received and who checked it
- Quantities received against ordered
- Any discrepancy, with photographs
- The claim reference where one was raised
- Lot numbers on large or repeating orders
Photographs settle disputes. A supplier looking at an image of a damaged carton on the day it arrived rarely argues; the same claim described three weeks later frequently gets refused because the window has closed.
Where receiving is recorded in the system that holds the order, the check becomes visible to whoever schedules the job — so a shortage found on Monday changes Thursday's plan automatically instead of being discovered by the printer.
Making it routine
The check only works if it always happens, and it only always happens if somebody owns it.
What makes it stick
- A named person responsible for receiving
- A printed checklist at the receiving bench
- Space to work — a bench, not the floor by the door
- Authority to raise a claim without asking
- Goods marked as checked, so nothing ambiguous reaches the press
Marking cases as checked is the small habit with the largest effect. A stack of unmarked boxes tells nobody anything; a stack where each case is signed and dated means the printer can start with confidence, which is the entire point of the exercise. The rest of the production archive assumes blanks were checked before they reached the press.
Storing what you receive
A checked delivery stored badly becomes an unchecked one. Cases that get split, restacked and merged with other jobs lose the identity that made the check worth doing, and the printer ends up counting again anyway.
Store by job, not by style, for anything already allocated. A shelf or a bay per open order — with the job number visible — means the printer collects one clearly marked set rather than assembling a run from general stock. Mixing allocated blanks into shelf stock is how orders come up short two days before they are due.
Keep general stock separate and count it on a schedule rather than continuously. Held blanks are money sitting on a shelf, and stock that nobody has looked at for a year is usually a colour or style that has quietly been discontinued — which becomes a problem at the worst moment if it is promised to somebody.
Where stock levels are held in the same system as the orders, allocation happens on paper before it happens on the shelf, and the quantity a job needs stops being a question anyone has to walk across the building to answer.
