What to Do If Your Clothing Order Has a Problem

Stop distributing the order, photograph the issue clearly alongside the garment label, count exactly how many pieces are affected, and raise it promptly with your order reference and approved specification to hand. Documentation gathered before anything is moved makes resolution straightforward.

First: Stop

The instinct on finding a problem is to work out how bad it is by going through everything. That is the right instinct, but do it before distributing, selling or washing anything. An order that is intact and complete can be assessed properly. One that has been partly issued to a team or sold to customers is much harder to evaluate, and the affected pieces become progressively harder to recover.

Establish What Kind of Problem It Is

The distinction matters, because it determines what happens next.

• A production issue — the garments do not match what was approved in colour, placement, size or quality.
• A specification issue — the order matches what was approved, but what was approved was wrong. This is why checking proofs carefully matters.
• A quantity or picking issue — wrong sizes, wrong colours, or a count that does not match the confirmation.
• A transit issue — damage or damp that occurred in delivery rather than production.
• An expectation issue — the product is as specified but not as you imagined, which is the case sampling is designed to prevent.

Document It Properly

Photograph the issue itself in good natural light, the garment's label showing the product code, and a wider shot showing the scale of the problem across multiple pieces. Count precisely how many are affected and whether the fault is consistent or intermittent — those are different problems with different explanations. Have your order reference and the approved artwork or specification available, since resolution usually turns on comparing what arrived against what was agreed.

“"An hour spent documenting properly saves a week of describing the problem in words."”

Raise It Clearly and Early

Contact promptly rather than after distributing what seems acceptable — partial distribution complicates every possible resolution. State what you ordered, what arrived, how many pieces are affected, and what outcome you are looking for. A factual account with photographs attached moves much faster than an emotional one, and there is rarely any conflict about a clearly evidenced production issue.

Preventing the Common Ones

Most avoidable problems trace back to two stages. The first is the proof: production runs from artwork approval, so anything wrong at approval is reproduced faithfully across the whole order. Preview placement and scale in the free Design Studio and check the proof against your specification rather than glancing at it. The second is not testing a new specification — ordering at the 50-piece minimum with mixed sizes first means discovering a problem across fifty pieces rather than five hundred.

Afterwards

Once resolved, record what happened and why in your specification notes. If the cause was an ambiguous instruction or an unchecked assumption, writing down the corrected detail prevents the same issue on the reorder — which is where problems most often repeat.