Last week was a huge week for the project! The first-round samples of the initial design arrived from all 3 suppliers, with 2 of the suppliers actually sending the sample of the 2nd design as well. Talk about impressive and fast!

As was expected, the samples differed across the different suppliers – with subtle changes in colors produced, the thickness in screen-printing, slight discrepancies in size and overall appearance. This is exactly why we placed an order with three suppliers in the first place. No matter how detailed your sketches and diagrams are, there will always be the issue of interpretation across factories.

In regards to design #1, one of the suppliers produced what we all believe to be the perfect sample. Ironically, it was this factory that produced colors that were slightly different to those original Pantone colors we’d sent – but proved to be more vibrant and gave more of a striking impression when looking at the range.

It’s interesting that there was a size difference at all between the three design #1 samples, but it all goes to show how important it is to order samples from a range of suppliers so that you are in fact getting the best deal possible, and not just settling for whatever a single supplier can produce.

The two samples of design #2 came out amazingly well and surprisingly, both suppliers produced almost identical samples in accordance with the sketch. Whilst we have realized some changes need to be made before making the official order, we were all impressed with the general quality of make and materials and are convinced that this design may very well outsell the first when the time comes to put them to market.

Since we have already chosen the supplier for design #1, we are now contacting the other two suppliers with the news that we won’t be employing their services at this point in time. It’s not about burning bridges, rather, politely suggesting that we will contact them should we require their services in the future.

Luckily for us, one of the two design #2 samples received has come from our chosen supplier of design #1 so we are hoping to employ this manufacturer for this second design also. Since both design #2 samples are remarkably similar, we are only requesting this manufacturer to make the changes instead of both. This will save us some more money in this sample production process. The desired changes will require another transfer of funds as it is considered as general sample production – nothing in this world of manufacturing is free. It’s important to have the samples perfect before you make the bulk order; a $200 loss is much easier to swallow than a $20,000 one, no?

In a further attempt to save money in the sample stages of this project, we’ve also contacted the third supplier (the one yet to deliver a design #2 sample) and cancelled the order for design #2. So as not to upset this manufacturing contact we checked-in early, requesting the status of the sample production for design #2 and fortunately they were running behind schedule themselves and in fact hadn’t even begun production. Problem solved.

We are yet to confirm an official price for the design #2 at this stage as the manufacturer will only be able to gauge exact shipping costs once the sample is finalized. We are still confident that we can make our $75 target for this design.