Customer Requirement

A European workwear and casual-wear distributor, sourcing through its Ningbo purchasing office, asked us to quote a program of #5 resin zippers: open-end, auto-lock half-tour sliders, 75 cm and 120 cm, about 41,000 pieces in black plus three colors - and the colors were not referenced to any zipper shade card, but to a polyester-thread color card with A/B-series numbers.

Our Approach

An unusual color reference is exactly where quoting straight from the customer's parameters goes wrong. So before any price was confirmed, our team asked what the zippers were for. Learning that the tape colors had to match the garments' topstitching thread exactly, we cross-checked every A/B-series number against our own dyeing records and sent shade swatches for written approval before a single meter of tape was dyed - turning the riskiest part of the order into a confirmed, documented step.

From there the process ran the way every Xinyi order does: pre-production samples for each colorway, approved before bulk ("sample confirmed, then produce" - written into the contract itself); in-process control of tape flatness, slider locking function and, above all, color consistency across the four shades that would appear side by side on the same garment range; every batch inspected before packing; packing and shipping marks arranged to the buyer's warehouse standards; delivery to the forwarder's warehouse in Ningbo on the contract date.

Result and Program Expansion

The buyer's inspection passed without rework - and the clearest feedback was the next order itself. The follow-up program raised both volume and complexity: #5 resin corn-tooth zippers, closed-end, with a decorative rope-pull slider, in 16 cm, 75 cm and 80 cm - the 16 cm line alone running to 100,000 pieces in black. Requirements tightened to mandatory shipping samples and batch-by-batch garment-weight checks; both were met, and the expanded program shipped on time.

The repeat order said what the customer might not put in writing: the details we asked about upfront were exactly the ones they were worried about. Confirm first, produce second - and keep doing it when the order grows tenfold.