You often see these little stickers on the inside of a new shirt, a pair of underwear, or some other garment. “Inspected by,” and then some number.
For whom are they intended? I would assume it is someone else in the factory where the garment is made.
But isn’t it a little redundant, to inspect to see if something has been inspected? Does anybody really look at every single item to make sure it’s been inspected?
And is trust that bad in the factory? Why are they afraid to assume that items coming from that different part of the factory have been inspected?
It would be just as easy to stick the sticker on without giving my T-shirt a good looking at, as it would to just ship it over to the next part of the factory without inspecting it, if there were no stickers. Know what I mean?
WAG: Its so the boss will know who to yell at if lots of defective stuff gets returned.
Having worked in various factories in my college days, I can tell you that inspection stickers at least serve the following purposes:
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shows the customer that the product has underrgone a quality assurance process to help instill confidence in the product.
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if defective, it allows a specific product to be tracked to a specific QA technician or worker.
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On some products, an inspection or production sticker is a way for a factory employee to express pride in his/her work. For example, grocery bags often have the name of the actual worker who produced the product. You wouldn’t make a faulty paper bag if yuor name was on it, would you?
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To comply with FTC regulations. Again not necessarily clothing, but many products require strict QA processes which must be documented in some way on the product itself.
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Yeah, but that would only be relevant within the factory. Most people remove and discard those inspection stickers immediately - at least I do. If the seams split even later in the day, you likely won’t be able to verify who your inspector was.
How common would it be for the garments to only get as far as the store, where the retailer notices faults with the problem and returns the shipment?