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Finding a suitable tent factory can be difficult. Because when you type “tent factory” on Google or Alibaba platforms, hundreds or even thousands of factories will appear. How should you select the factory that suits you at this time? Today I will share with you 5 things you need to pay attention to based on my 8+ years of working experience in this industry.
Products This Tent Factory Has Produced
When seeking to collaborate with a tent factory, understanding the range of products they have manufactured is crucial. I think a sample can only be used for evaluating a supplier’s willingness to work with you, responsiveness, product development capabilities, and service. But only bulk production reflects the factory’s true capabilities.
A factory accustomed to producing low-level products may not readily meet high-quality standards or stringent requirements because their entire workforce, from leadership to workers, operates at a lower thoughts and skill level. This doesn’t necessarily mean that low-level products equate to bad quality. There is a market demand for high-end products for adventurers and explorers in extreme environments, but there’s also a huge need for budget-friendly options for the average camper.
As evident from our sewing workers’ training process, our priority is to ensure product quality rather than prioritize speed. Conversely, factories producing low-level products may emphasize efficiency to reduce production costs. Its easy to understand, when speed up, quality down.
When searching for a factory, consider your product’s positioning and align it with a suitable manufacturer rather than solely focusing on the best product quality. Matching your requirements with the right factory is essential for a successful partnership.
Quality Control Procedures
Product quality control is mainly consist of three parts, so when you visit the factory, you should try to understand the factory’s work process according to the following three stages:
Inspection Before Bulk Production
What kind of testing is done on raw materials before they are sent from raw material suppliers to factories?
What kind of testing will the tent factory conduct before receiving the raw materials?
Also before production, is everyone from the technical, workshop supervisors to the sewing workers and inspection workers clearly understood the details and quality requirements of the products for this order.
Inspection During Bulk Production
After mass production begins, does the factory have a workshop supervisor or team leader to conduct regular inspections to discover errors or areas that need improvement at any time?
Will there be necessary full inspection procedures between each process? For example, in my previous article Exploring Tent Stitching Taping: Ensuring The Integrity Of Every Seam, I mentioned that there should be no threads under the taping. But in the actual production process, even if you keep emphasizing to the sewing workers to remove all thread ends, they cannot do perfectly, cause their main work is focused on “stitching”, not “cut”. All “cut thread” is an extra action that cannot be performed 100%. We believe that if we want to make a good product, we must break down the production process to the smallest unit, so that each worker can only perform one action. So in the Meboutdoor tent factory, between the two processes of sewing and taping, we have dedicated workers who are only responsible for repairing the threads to ensure that the product is 100% inspected.
Inspection After Bulk Production
I have a customer who said something like this: “If a product has a defect, you find it and correct it before shipment, it is still a good product to me; but if it is me or even my consumers who find the defect, then the product is a defective product.” This is a very good customer, while ensuring that he receives good quality products, he also considers that the factory will not produce 100% defect-free products. After all, tent production is still a labor-intensive textile industry, not mechanized production, so he putted “product inspection” to a very important position. At Meboutdoor tent factory, we perform 100% full inspection on all products. For the highest quality products, we also perform 100% full pitch inspection to ensure that no detail is missed.
Material Sourcing
Quality of raw materials
Qualified raw materials are the basis for producing a quality tent. Here, you need to ask the tent factory about their requirements for raw material quality. For example, what are their requirements for the tear strength/color fastness/water resistance of fabrics, and what are their requirements for the tensile/surface treatment of aluminum poles.
Types of raw materials
With the development of the tent industry, tent designs on the market have become very saturated. You have to make your tent stand out from other similar products in terms of structure and shape, so you have to work hard on material and accessories. Developing new functional fabrics or accessories is very important to make your tent unique in the market. Therefore, at Meboutdoor, we always pay attention to the developments and trends of raw material brands or manufacturers.
Customization Options
Of course, if you want to create new products, you must constantly innovate. At this time, you need to examine the customization capabilities of the factory.
If you have experience in developing new products with a tent factory, then you are likely to experience this. In this situation, when you confidently propose your idea to the factory, you will often receive rejection from the contact person. They will only tell you no, the idea cannot be accomplished, but they cannot even explain to you why. From my experience, many times, they are unable to achieve it simply because they have no experience, have not done it before, and do not want to try. This is an ideological impossibility, but not a practical impossibility.
But at Meboutdoor, we are committed to accomplish every customer’s creativity. At least we will not kill the customer’s creativity just in the thought level. Even if it cannot be accomplished due to reasons such as technology or sewing, we will try to come up with other solutions to solve the problem and realize its final function after understanding the purpose of the customer’s idea and the functions they want to achieve.
Environmental Sustainability
As everyone pays more and more attention to protecting the environment, the concept of sustainability is increasingly being added to tent production. But achieving sustainability is not just as simple as using recycled materials. I think it should be covered more extensively throughout the entire production process. So when you are communicating with the factory, you can also try to understand some of their thoughts on sustainability, such as:
– How do they reduce waste and make the best use of all the materials and accessories?
– Do they have any redevelopment plans for the leftover materials that really cannot be put into production? For example, one of our foam pad factories re-presses the scraps leftover from large foam mat production into small seat mats, greatly reducing the remaining leftover.
– For the fabric and tent pole factories they cooperate with, are they implementing any new processes to reduce pollution and material waste caused by fabric dyeing and aluminum pole oxidation?
But the quality of tents still mainly depends on the production skill level of workers.
Therefore, at the end of the article, I will briefly share with you the process of how we train sewing workers at Meboutdoor tent factory. At the same time, you can also have a general understanding of the sewing difficulty of different fabrics.
Fabric Joining
We rarely hire workers without sewing experience. Upon starting, they practice by joining two pieces of fabric, typically heavier and thicker materials like 150D Oxford fabric or 75D polyester fabric.
Sewing Small Components
Next, they sew smaller components such as stuffsacks, pole sacks, and peg sacks.
Sewing Tent Fly
They progress to sewing fly of tent, starting with straight lines and stiffer fabrics, gradually advancing to curved seams and more complex stitches.
Sewing Inner Tent
Inner tents often require hanging on poles or hooks attached to the outer tent. Due to stricter dimensional requirements, sewing inner tents is more challenging, akin to transitioning from 2D to 3D sewing. Inner tent with bad workmanship looks sag or wrinkles after set up.
Single Silicone-coated Fabric
Fabrics coated with silicone are used to enhance tear resistance and are typically lightweight (e.g., 30D/20D/15D/10D nylon), making sewing more difficult due to their soft and slippery nature.
Double Silicone-coated Fabric
These fabrics pose the highest difficulty level as they are exceptionally soft and slippery, making fabric control challenging. Sewing speed decreases significantly compared to regular fabrics, contributing to the higher production costs of tents made from such materials.
Below pictures shows our workers are stitching.
Throughout the whole training process, workers undergo regular inspections by workshop supervisors and quality inspectors. Daily online inspections occur at least four times, checking the quality of semi-finished products and identifying areas for improvement in sewing techniques. Apprentices receive the most attention during this process.
Conclusion
With a comprehensive understanding of the above aspect, you can make informed decisions when selecting a tent factory for collaboration.
But as you may noticed, this article mainly focuses on the inspection of product quality, because we always put product quality first. In the future, I will continue to share other tips you need to pay attention to when looking for a tent factory.
