Getting your ready-made garment products to an overseas market is not just about taking care of basic apparel shipping measures. There is a list of things that you need to consider and several measures you have to take to keep the ball rolling and establish a successful, ready-made garment supply chain to any overseas market. In this piece, we are going to discuss those challenges in more detail so aspiring ready-made garment exporters can easily find their feet in new, untapped worldwide markets.

Tight Deadlines Are a Regularity in Ready-Made Garment Shipping

Every business often finds itself in a situation where it has to work around tight deadlines to fulfill the client’s requirements. Deadlines are also part of the process if you are running a venture centered on garment shipping. Many time,s garment manufacturers also get a short lead time to fulfill the shipment.

However, ready-made garment shipping is a different ballgame in this regard. You tread a tightrope of deadlines with every order of a ready-made apparel consignment. It is important to understand that clients are not responsible for making the procurement of ready-made garments such a time-sensitive business. The fashion trends and the collective behavior of end consumers are the reasons why retailers and wholesalers don’t have any other option except to demand a fast turnaround time from the manufacturers.

In short, you have to take tight deadlines and short lead time as the prerequisite of a ready-made garment shipping business. There are multiple ways in which you can adjust and modify your business to fulfill quick turnarounds on ready-made fashion shipments.

Increase Your Manufacturing Capacity

If you want to make a sustainable worldwide clientele of your ready-made clothing items, then you have to increase your manufacturing capacity. Let’s try to understand it with the help of an example.

A Jordanian company gets an order from a US-based wholesaler to deliver them 10,000 pieces of floral shirts aimed to be sold on Black Friday. The garment company will receive this order by the end of October with a turnaround/lead time of three weeks.

In other words, the Jordanian manufacturer has 21 days in total to make 10,000 pieces and then has to ship them as well within the same timeframe. If the manufacturer can make, say, 500 of those shirts in a single working day, then there is no way it can get them made and delivered in the prescribed time even if air freight is used to deliver the consignment.

So, you have to increase your manufacturing capacity in line with the potential overseas clientele you are aiming to serve. In the above example, the manufacturer can’t get even a single extra day from the wholesaler who himself has to meet the deadlines he has promised its retail base.

Keep All Shipping Options Always Ready

You also need to factor in your shipping options and respective transit times to ensure your ready-made consignments can reach their destinations on the dot.  Sea freight is the best option to ship large garment consignments to overseas markets. It is reliable and cost-effective. However, its longer transit time can become a snag for ready-made fashion shipping in some cases.

For that matter, you don’t have to confine your shipping operations to ocean freight only. Businesses dealing in regular garment shipping can manage their orders through ocean freight services. However, a business that primarily deals in ready-made orders must always have air freight at its disposal to ensure no deadline is missed.

Product Recalls and Cost of Reverse Logistics for Ready-Made Garment

When you sign a contract as a manufacturer with an overseas garment retailer, many times, you have to give them the right to ask you for product recall if it doesn’t meet the prescribed standards. Unfortunately, this frequently happens with ready-made garment shipments. A difference in the color gradient, or changing the floral pattern from the template given by the retailer— all such and many other flaws become a basis of the product recall.

If you want to reap the lucrative prospect of ready-made garment shipping, then you have to put up with this residual risk. You have to be mentally and operationally prepared for product recalls. You also need to take into account the expenses that reverse logistics of the recalled consignment would consume. Similarly, you need to find an alternative market for the recalled apparel items to mitigate the fiscal losses.

Packing Items in the Right Packaging

When you ship fabrics and general apparel items, you don’t think much about their packaging. But that’s not the case if you are dealing with ready-made garment shipping. If you are supplying to Europe and the US from the Middle Eastern ports, then you have to make sure certain ready-made clothing items are packed in a certain way.

It is worth mentioning that many ready-made garment manufacturers fail to retain customers because they put little thought into the packaging of the consignment.

Garment Boxes and Garment on Hanger

These are the two major packaging methods you can use to ship your ready-made garments. However, you must know when to use which type of packaging. If your fashion shipping entails satin jackets, then it would be better if you booked a GOH (Garment on Hanger) container for it. Satin is a delicate material and extremely prone to wrinkles. Folding and packing it in boxes for three weeks will mess up its creases and will increase the chores for the retailer.

On the other hand, shipping them in a hanging position means retailers can directly put them for sale without dealing with their wrinkles first. But it is also important to understand that GOH packaging is not always the answer to your fashion shipping. For instance, ready-made items made of jersey, knitwear, or any stretchy fabric must be folded and packed in garment boxes. By shipping them in a GOH container, you can distort their original measurements forever.

Keeping the Garment Collection Ready and Effectively Utilizing It

When ready-made garment manufacturing and shipping don’t start immediately after an order has been received, you won’t be able to serve multiple clients all at once. To run successful ready-made garment shipping machinery, you need to build and store garment stocks that can ensure no lag occurs in your supply chain.

However, having stocks of ready-made garments is a tricky prospect.  Without due groundwork, you will fail to utilize the stocked garment items and eventually end up with outdated apparel. To successfully build garment collections to sell them later, you will have to be in sync with the fashion and trends of your overseas target market.

Your stock must contain items that never go out of fashion in your target market if you want to run the supply chain of apparel shipping effectively. The other way to secure your ready-made garment collection is to make items that are considered “undying” in the fashion world and never go out of style anywhere (e.g., button-up shirts, slim-fit pairs of jeans, etc.)

Finding the Right Importing and Garment Shipping Partner for Ready-Made Garment

Last but not least, you have to find the right people to work with if you want to take on the challenge of ready-made garment shipping. For instance, you must have a seasoned Importer of Record in your working team who can take care of your apparel shipments for destinations spanned across the globe.

While working as an overseas garment manufacturer and serving clientele in different parts of the world, it is not virtually possible to register your business in every destination country and hire people to represent you there. The services of a seasoned Importer of Record will come in very useful there. It will procure your ready-made apparel shipments to every port of destination while taking care of the respective customs laws and importing tariffs. You won’t need a single person from your in-house team to deal with shipments on the ground as long as you are working with a thoroughly professional IOR.

Moreover, you also need to bring in the expertise of garment shipping services because they will be able to adjust and accommodate your ready-made consignment as per the given instructions (garment boxes, GOH shipping, etc.) You can make your shipping operations easier and less hectic by finding a single contractor who works in the capacities of both IOR and garment shipping services.

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Air and Sea Freight: The Two Ways to Ship Fashions

You two have options when it comes to shipping Fashions from the Middle East to the American and European markets: air freight and sea freight. However, choosing between the two is one hell of a task. If you have found a Fashion shipping service that offers both sea and air freight but you are not sure about choosing which one, then factor in the pros and cons of both. Let’s talk about the air freight first. There is no doubt that air freight has changed the shipment landscape. It has exponentially expedited the turnaround and transit times.  However, you also need to factor in its downsides if you want to keep it a feasible option for your Fashion shipping.

Use Air Freight for Your Fashion Shipping If:

You Need to Deliver the Consignment in the Least Possible Time

Let’s suppose a Jordanian merchandiser promises a wholesaler in Texas to deliver a consignment of men’s button-down shirts within three months via regular ocean freight. However, the consignment of those 4,000 shirts has been delayed due to a manufacturing lag. Now, the situation is the merchandise only has 10 days remaining to meet the 3-month deadline. It has now two options to work with:

1. Hastily package the consignment and ship it via vessel that would take anywhere between 28 to 45 days to reach the destination port.
2. Thoroughly pack and prepare the consignment and then book it through air freight for Dallas. The shipment will fly from the Queen Alia International Airport to the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport within 1-2 days.

Option 1 entails a lot of risk for the Jordanian business. The missed deadline is not going to bode well for the wholesaler. Moreover, the crackpot packaging of the consignment is going to make this a double-whammy.  The Jordanian merchandise will certainly save shipment costs by sticking to sea freight but with a risk of losing a potential long-time client and many contracts. This screwed-up shipment will also go on to blot its reputation in the region. On the other hand, option 2 involves higher shipment costs, but it will allow the business to ensure quality compliance and meet the promised deadline. The shipping overspent here is going to serve the business well in the long run.

You Need to Ensure Minimal Risk to Your Fashion Consignment

Suppose an Egyptian fashion supplier receives an order for bespoke blazers from a high-end European brand. Although sea freight is safe, its long transit time increases the risk of damage, especially for GOH (Garment on Hanger) items. In such cases, opting for air freight, even with ample lead time, is preferable. This ensures the supplier is liable for the shortest duration, delivering within a day or two. The supplier can also factor the higher air freight cost into the price of the blazers, and the European brand will appreciate the diligence in choosing air over sea freight. Lastly, a consignment of bespoke apparel is more likely to be not too bulky. This means you can easily find a single booking in your preferred timeslot with your Fashion shipping service. Let’s also have a quick rundown of some of the other benefits of using air freight for Fashions

Lesser Shipping Insurance Premium

Air is considered the safest way to travel and transport. Moreover, airports all around the world have the utmost security measures in place. This inevitably drops the cost of insurance for items shipped through the air.

You Don’t Need to Overfill Your Inventories

You get a transit time of not more than a week with air freight to ship your items anywhere in the world. This means your Fashion products don’t have to sit in the inventories for long stretches to get out of fashion. If you establish regular air freight for your apparel shipping to the overseas market, then you can run your manufacturing process more in sync with the demand and orders.

Accurate Shipping Dates

If you have promised to deliver a consignment on the 26^th of June, then you will be able to deliver it on time with air freight only. Such accurate and pin-point shipping dates can’t be promised in any other shipping method (not even for land freight)

Use Sea Freight for Your Fashion Shipping If:

You Are Dealing in Thousands of Pieces and Tons of Volume

An Egyptian fashion company has contracted to deliver 40,000 pairs of jeans to an American enterprise over the next year. Opting for air freight is not feasible due to high costs. Instead, sea freight is ideal for such bulk shipments. A 20-ft container can hold 9,000-11,000 pairs of jeans, allowing the company to ship the order in four installments, each reaching the destination port within six weeks. This method can halve the logistical expenses. In short, large fashion shipments should be sent by sea.

If Your Shipment Entails a Large Volume of GOH (Garment On Hanger)

If a company is making silk apparel and has promised the buyer to ship them unfolded, then there is only one option to consider, i.e., GOH. You can deliver GOH via both air and sea freight. However, GOH on air freight costs a lot more than the sea. So, if the company has to ship a large volume of GOH, air freight is going to eat into a large chunk of its profits. Meanwhile, getting a full GOH container in the sea freight is not going to cost you that much for a pretty simple reason: the humungous volume you get in a shipping vessel.  When the largest airfreight carrier can’t carry more than 250 tons, an average container vessel can float more than 100,000 tons of cargo.

You Are Eyeing to Establish a Steady Supply-Chain

A company with multiple buyers in the same region should rely on sea freight for a stable supply chain. Supplying several buyers overseas usually doesn’t involve tight deadlines, allowing you to serve multiple buyers from one port. While sea freight offers large shipping volumes at lower costs, it also has some downsides to be aware of.

It Involves a Lot of Documentation

In comparison to air, sea freight entails a lot of paperwork, particularly if you are taking care of all the imports and customs requirements on your own.  You can, however, get around this red tape by hiring the experts for such services.

You Have to Pay More in Duties

For many countries, shipping through the sea involves more taxes and duties. If you are handling a small Fashion cargo, then consider this factor because chances are that air shipping may come in more cost-effective and handy for you. If you are not sure of the long list of duties and taxes payable at the port of destination.

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