“Get it right the first time” might seem like an overly simplistic motto, but there is no better way to reduce rampant material and labor waste in fashion production, reduce retailer chargebacks, and preserve brand equity with consumers.
“A reworked product will never have the same quality as getting it right from the outset,” said Jose R. Suarez, founder and CEO of Impactiva. “Most of the third parties in our industry are in the final quality control business. We want to focus on the root causes of rejection and quality issues to aim for zero defect production.”
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Now in its 20th anniversary of embodying its Right from the Start™ credo, Impactiva works with a broad range of footwear and apparel brands, from New Balance to Caleres, and are renowned for their leather expertise.
Zero-defect quality is especially urgent today with the rise of DTC e-commerce models. Consumers not only face the hassle of returning defective items from home, but there’s no retail sales associate nearby to grab them another garment or pair. The cost of poor quality is a lose-lose proposition.
To get things right from the start, Impactiva focuses not only on finished quality at Tier 1 and 2, but also takes a hard look at operational issues like speed, flexibility, and cost-waste reduction. Formally educated as an industrial engineer, Suarez approaches efficiencies with mathematical precision, especially when maximizing direct-to-cutting placement programs. Traditionally, a significant percent of leather on the shop floor goes to waste, mainly due to nonoptimal component nesting and cutters lacking training and coaching. Brands that have teamed up with Impactiva, however, have seen a “minimum average” of +6 percent yield improvement in leather cutting.
Too many factories are not aware of the waste they create, and thus don’t take sufficient action to mitigate it, said Suarez. Yet building such waste into their cost models is no longer accepted by consumers asking for sustainable use of our planet’s resources.
“If three, four, five percent of components or finished product gets rejected, then companies have to overproduce three, four, five percent just to fully complete the order,” he said. “The lack of awareness by brands and factory leadership of the total material wastage we generate as an industry, whether it’s fabric or leather, needs to change. Excessive cutting shopfloor material waste, coupled with overproduction and manufacturing errors frequently results in 10, 15, 20, 25…. percent of wasted materials. And this does not even include the wasted labor.”
Rework and the resulting loss of production are among the highest variables that negatively impact the carbon footprint per unit of output in our industry. “You’d be surprised—normally when we are called, we initially see 10, 12, 14, even up to 30 percent of orders being rejected and thus requiring rework. All of this is wasted capacity that would reduce the number of factories we need to build to supply the growing middle-class consumers of our planet.”
Overall, Impactiva’s Quality Assurance Programs achieve industry leading results. Its leather quality assurance program results in +6 percent cutting yield improvement, +$0.25 savings per sq. ft. and +98 percent of leather going direct-to-cutting without a factory reinspection. Lead-time savings achieved by leaning out a brand’s leather supply chain can average up to 15 days. Impactiva’s apparel and footwear quality assurance programs are achieving +99.9 percent of pieces arriving without factory claims.
‘We’re all about HI – human intelligence’
In today’s age of technology, Impactiva believes that people are essential to shifting the efficiency paradigm. “Everyone is talking about AI [artificial intelligence]; we believe that the largest untapped resource in our industry is the human intelligence of the 60 million artisans who manufacture the products we wear, use and enjoy,” said Suarez.
The challenge is how to activate and motivate the hearts and minds of the artisans so that they are the solution to helping brands produce high quality products for the consumers of the world.
Suarez says Impactiva achieves this by deeply understanding the key elements of the aesthetic look, fit and functionality of each SKU by writing them down in a Know Your Product spec sheet. This spec sheet is then used by their technicians to speak directly to the artisans responsible for producing these key points, so that they fully understand what they are being asked to do. By interacting with the artisans at this level and recognizing their importance, their desire to do well is activated with “astonishing” results.
“We sit down and talk to them as members of the team, helping them produce exactly what the designer and merchandiser—whether that person is sitting in Paris, Milan, New York, London—envisioned.”
Suarez continued, “it’s heartwarming to see how with an engineering system mindset and knowing how to activate human intelligence with a human touch, you can strive for perfection to achieve quality excellence that in our 20th year of existence, no other company has been able to match.”
