6 Quality Control Issues in Footwear and How to Identify and Fix Them!
Look beyond the comfort; there’s much more precision required while manufacturing your shoe. In fact, shoe manufacturing process is an art of perfection and precision in itself.
Whether you are a customer, wholesale, retailer, shoe designer, or importer shoe vendor, it’s imperative that when you are dealing with custom shoe manufacturers or wholesale shoe manufacturers, you can identify the defects in footwear.
Although shoes are made of robust and reliable materials such as plastic, leather, rubber, they are vulnerable to defects.
Here’s a guide to major defects of the shoe manufacturing industry and how to perform a quality check.
How to Check Shoe Quality? Are Chinese Shoe Manufacturers Reliable For Your Shoe Business?
Shoe inspection is an art; but, you don’t need special tools for it. There are three categories to identify shoe quality: ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ grade shoes.
A grade shoes are the high quality shoes without any cosmetic or functional defects. They are comparatively expensive, but they are manufacturer according to the highest quality standards.
B grade shoes do not have functional defects, but there can be cosmetic defects that we will discuss in the article. These shoes are sold at discounted prices or sent to markets where they are acceptable.
C grade shoes can have both functional and cosmetic defects that are irreparable. Such shoes aren’t worthy to be sold as they can cause injury to wearer and have poor workmanship.
As for the Chinese footwear market, it is world’s top producer of footwear, with an approximate production of 13.5 billion pairs in 2018. In fact, in footwear industry, there’s a domination of Asia Pacific (APAC) region including India, China, Vietnam, and Indonesia as leaders of footwear industry. These 4 countries have accounted for more than 75% footwear production in 2018.
If you are setting up a shoe store, check out with us at China shoe manufacturers, the leading footwear company in Guangzhou. We have a range of high-quality A Grade shoes with all the quality checks performed. The greatest convenient we offer is a minimal order quantity of 20 pair that lets you perform all the quality checks yourself before entering into business with us.
6 Quality Checks To Perform When Manufacturing or Buying Shoes:
Whether you are importing shoes from shoe manufacturing companies in China, Indonesia, India, or Vietnam, what needs to be looked at is cosmetic defects and non-cosmetic defects. And, functional defects shouldn’t be tolerated at all.
Usually, with China wholesale shoe manufacturers, you don’t have to worry about the quality checks. With thousands of shoe factories in Guangzhou, China, leading footwear companies such as Nike put their faith in Chinese industries.
Let’s have a look at various shoe defects each factory owner must identify and fix.
- Excess Glue or Wax:
Shoes being sold at discounted rates are commonly found with this cosmetic defect of excess glue or wax oozing out from the sole corners. The reason for low quality workmanship is rushing through the orders.
During the manufacturing process, these glue, oil or wax excess marks can be easily wiped out. But, if it stays past the manufacturing process, it can be very unsightly for the customer to choose it.
It’s imperative to train your workers to use minimal or adequate amount of wax or glue; and to wipe it off if it oozes out then and there. You can save a thousand shoes from returning to your factories.
- Weak Cementing:
A common occurrence in case of rubber soles like those in sneakers. Weak cementing occurs when inadequate amount of adhesive glue is applied to the rubber sole. Or if the shoe manufacturer company isn’t using the right type of adhesive or low quality adhesive, their shoes are found with this common defect.
However, this shouldn’t be confused with soles coming off after a year of usage due to undue hot weather conditions.
Being a shoe factory head, you must check if the workers are using high-quality shoe adhesive and if they are using ample amount of glue or not.
- Abrasive Marks:
Shiny leather shoe skins are quite delicate and glossy. Abrasive marks can immediately become prominent if not dealt with care. It’s due to poor handling and packaging of shoe during the shoe production process.
To ensure quality check regarding perfect handling of shoes by your workers, ensure that they wear gloves during work. Check if shoes are being moved unnecessarily between workers and being roughly dealt due to bulk order. Most of all, make your packaging smooth enough to prevent any abrasive marks.
- Asymmetry:
Asymmetry is another common shoe manufacturing defect that is a very prominent cosmetic defect. There can be asymmetry in certain parts of the shoe. One shoe maybe higher than the other. There can be print difference due to improper cutting or fitting during the manufacturing process.
To identify asymmetry, you can simply place the pair together and check whether there are any differences. Have a few workers committed to checking the width, height, color, cutting, print design, etc. for each pair of shoe. Also, check for the color bleeding across the blocks or on the rubber soles. Even one failure can cost you millions of dollars!
- Incorrect Sizes:
It’s not the shoe size that’s awry but the labelling that makes the whole situation worse. Although there isn’t any cosmetic defect, but this can be a great issue when it comes to selling them.
Usually incorrect sizing issues don’t ar
ise due to well-sorted shoe production processes. But, if sorted wrongly and packaged wrongly, it can be a huge trouble.
Make sure your employees are handling, packaging, and storing the shoes in an organized manner no matter how huge the orders may be.
- Sharp edges and Nails
Sharp edges and protruding nails are a common quality defect that makes shoes unwearable and the shoe manufacturer unreliable. Footwear are all about comfort over style.
Men’s leather shoes mostly require nails for binding the sole. And, if the sharp ends aren’t pressed down, they can protrude into the sole that can be hurtful to the customer when trying on the shoes.
If the sharp points occur due to a factory process, they should be immediately eliminated.
What Can You Do To Stop The Mishaps?
All in all, have a quality check staff to examine each shoe individually for these 6 quality control problems and have a satisfied customer queue to work with your factories.
You can invite a team for Quality Inspection of Footwear for unbiased review that will perform the following tests:
- Bonding test
- Abuse Test
- Smell Test
- Symmetry Check
- Stuffing Material Check
- Seam Strength
- Fitting Test
- Adhesive Test
- Stitches per Inches Check
- Export Carton Drop Test
Where to Find Reliable Manufacturers?
Just in case you are wondering where can you find reliable shoe factories that have proper quality checks—China has been the leading footwear manufacturer for years now!
When dealing with China manufacturers, you are availing the opportunities of low labor costs, high-quality leather manufacturing factories within China, and affordable wholesale shoe manufacturing rates.
Who Are China Shoe Manufacturers?
We At Marcusius China Shoe Manufacturers perform a number of quality checks to prevent such naïve mistakes. When you place an order with us, you wouldn’t be able to find excess glue or ripping sole edges, or sharp edges and other quality issues.
Although China shoe companies have thousands of orders to cater to, they have a huge number of workers paying attention to detail and quality. We at China shoe manufacturer specially facilitate start-up business by offering wholesale leather shoes, wholesale exotic skin shoes, etc. in men’s wear with minimum order while keeping these cosmetic technicalities in check.
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