Checking a first order: what to do before the stock goes into the stockroom

A first order arrives and gets moved straight into the stockroom, because it looks right and the shop needs stock. Whatever was wrong with it is discovered four months later, by which time the leverage to do anything about it has gone.

Checking a first order is not distrust. It is the step that establishes what “correct” means for every order after it, which is why it is worth more on the first one than on any subsequent one.

The approved sample is the standard

Everything below assumes one thing: that a pre-production sample was approved and that you still have it. If it was never formally approved, or it was sent back and nobody kept a reference, there is no standard to check against and the conversation becomes opinion against opinion.

Keep the approved piece somewhere findable, with the date and who signed it. It is the single most useful object in the whole programme and it costs nothing to retain.

Agree the inspection terms before production, not after

Inspection is a commercial arrangement and it needs settling while the order is being placed:

• Who inspects — the supplier, you, or a third-party agency
• When — during production, before shipment, or on arrival. Each catches different problems, and the earlier ones are the ones that can still be fixed.
• Against what standard and at what level — sampling inspection is a defined discipline with named standards and severity levels, and “we will check it” is not one of them. Agree the standard and the level in writing.
• What happens on failure — rework, discount, replacement or rejection, and who bears the freight in each case. This is the clause that decides whether a problem is a negotiation or a procedure.

None of this is adversarial. A supplier who has run programmes before will have answers ready, because ambiguity here costs them as much as it costs you.

What to actually check on arrival

Against the approved sample

• Colour. Side by side, under the retail lighting, not one after the other from memory. Look at the range across several pieces, not one.
• Registration and detail. Whether print sits where it should relative to the form, and whether fine detail survived at production speed the way it did on the sample.
• Finish on the edges and reverse. This is where a run diverges from a carefully made sample first.

The magnet

The part most likely to be checked never. Test that it holds on a real painted steel door rather than on a bare test plate, test how the retention behaves when someone tries to pull the magnet out, and look at what a drop onto a hard floor does. If any of that is worse than the approved sample, it matters more than a colour shift does.

Counts and packing

• Piece count per inner pack and per carton, against what the paperwork says
• Carton markings and whether the destination markings are the ones the market requires
• Barcode scans — actually scan one, with a real scanner, before the goods reach a till
• Assortment: on a multi-destination range, confirm the quantity split by design matches the order, since this is a common and easily fixed error that is invisible until a specific site runs out

The shipment itself

Photograph the cartons before opening them, and photograph anything that looks wrong before moving it. Claims — with the supplier or a carrier — are decided on evidence gathered in the first day, not on a description written a month later.

If something is wrong

Three things, in this order, and the order matters:

1. Document before you sort. Photographs, counts, carton numbers. Once mixed into stock, the evidence is gone.
2. Say so immediately. Every remedy — rework, replacement, credit — gets harder the longer the goods have been in your possession, and some become impossible.
3. Separate the defect from the standard. “This does not match the approved sample” is a resolvable claim. “I do not like it” is a different conversation and should be had as one, honestly, rather than dressed as a quality complaint.

What the first order should leave you with

Not just stock. It should leave you with a retained reference piece, a written record of what was checked and found, and an agreed inspection standard that the second order inherits. That is the point at which a supplier relationship stops being a series of one-off gambles.

If you want the inspection terms settled up front rather than improvised on arrival, say so with the enquiry and they get quoted alongside everything else.