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I have been involved recently in some major quality issues for some well known, respected and established footwear importers, retailers and brands. The problems have ranged from nails in the insole resulting in a serious injury claim from the parents of an injured child, to product recalls and bulk return to manufacturers due to the dropping off of embelishments in both wear and in the shoe boxes in the shop on ladies footwear and the rapid disintigration and wear of the top piece on a ladies styrene wedge style.
All part and parcel of working in such a complex product and industry? Perhaps. But on closer scrutiny all three problems could have been and should have been avoided. Shop staff must be close to boiling point when yet another irate customer returns yet another pair of faulty shoes for exactly the same reason as last season, and from the same supplier!
The factory using insole tacks to attach childrens' insoles to the last had been warned several times to stop this process. There are tried and tested alternatives available. They had been caught out several times in the past and were penalised with bigger and bigger orders! Not one customer had actually come down heavy and hit them where it hurt. In their pockets.Only e mail warnings and strongly worded letters. No independent audits, no written and audited procedures, no cancelled orders or reduced orders. The other two quality issues hi-lighted above were easily detectable at the sample , pre-production, testing or wearer trial stage. Any good technologist or quality manager worth his salt should have spotted one or both potential problems. But here lies the problem. If a company does not build quality into its initial product, does not technically vet its samples, does not hold formal, focused, quality bias pre-production meetings, does not test or wearer trial its new designs, then serious quality, technical and safety issues can result. But then again, where have all the well trained, technically competent, experienced and knowledgeable footwear technologists gone? Any footwear technologist under 35 in the UK probably hasn't even worked in a shoe factory! So holding a well focused, technically bias pre-production meeting with a 22 year old garment technologist doesn't exactly bode well for the quality of future supplies.
Well trained, experienced and technically competent staff working to proven quality processes and supported by senior management, with apporpriate budgets, is the only way to supply good quality, technically sound, legally compliant and safe product to the end consumer. Anything else is window dressing and the financial consequencies could be horrendous to all but the absolutely financially secure companies.
Jack Brown is an independent consultant to the global footwear industry and can be contacted on jbfootwear@aol.com for all quality and technical issues relating to footwear.
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