Textile Knowledge Release: How To Choose Healthy And Safe Children's Underwear

Editor's note: a sudden "shrinkage rate storm" let Beijing market The sales of children's knitted underwear brands have been greatly shocked. The cause of the accident stems from the recent results of the comparison of 20 samples of children's knitted underwear (including infant knitted underwear) sold in the Beijing market by the Chinese Consumers Association. The producers of these 20 brands come from 6 provinces and cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Shandong, Guangdong and Fujian, and also include a Korean import product. The results show that the overall quality of the comparative test samples is better, and the safety performance indicators specified by the national mandatory standards meet the relevant standards. But the outstanding problem is Shrinkage (washing size change rate) is not up to standard.

Although shrinkage has been an indicator of textile quality for a long time, it has little effect on consumer use. Of course, no one will allow the quality of children's underwear to shrink. So what is the problem of the shrinkage rate that has been neglected and whether it is an individual phenomenon or a common situation? How much impact on the quality of children's underwear? How much harm has it brought to consumers? How do those children's underwear enterprises deal with the shrinkage problem? Who is playing dumb to shrink products? How should we choose healthy and safe children's underwear?

To this end, the clothing times organized the core report to analyze the long-standing problem of shrinkage of children's underwear quality, hoping to find some practical ideas and methods.

Mystery shopper Xiao Wang's "buy clothes classics"

Although it has been half a year, but reminiscent of the hard work that has been hovering in every brand store every day since the beginning of the early autumn of last year, Xiao Wang, a surveyor of the Chinese Consumer Association (hereinafter referred to as the "China Association for China Association"), still has a great sense of achievement.

In the early autumn of 2010, Xiao Wang and another colleague went deep into the children's clothing areas of Beijing SOGO, Shuang an shopping malls, Changan shopping malls, Gan Jia Kou shopping malls, Tianhong Department store, Xinguang Tiandi, Jin Yuan new Yansha MALL and other shopping malls. Secret investigations almost completely beat all brands.

Every year after September, children's underwear products will be mounted on the central display stand of children's wear. The busy shopping malls are brightly lit. Each brand's window displays the latest model of the season. Looking at it, many famous baby brand sales areas have prominent cartoon signs and children's clothing displays. These brands and markets are well-known in the baby clothing brand. Sale The wide range of brands is the direct goal of Wang's survey.

In the golden section of Beijing, the price of clothes is high, and children's clothing is not cheap. Xiao Wang's eyes filtered the price of children's underwear over and over again, ranging from 118 yuan to 438 yuan, with an average price of 199 yuan. It is not surprising that such prices are placed in large shopping malls in the first tier cities. After all, the level of consumption is enough, but whether the price is directly proportional to the quality is not only the benevolent but also the wise.

"We are big brands, and we sell reputation. Underwear for children must be pure cotton, not allergic to nature. "

"You can rest assured that every mother who buys clothes in our store every day is a repeat customer who recognizes our brand. From birth to the age of five or six, many children grow up in our clothes. You can buy it for your child, absolutely good quality. "

"Adult clothes can be bought cheap, and children's clothes must be bought..."

Almost every shopping guide in the children's clothing counters of Beijing's shopping malls will say many things to the customers. Those young people who are parents at first will willingly buy hundreds of dollars of children's clothing, even if these children's clothes can only be worn by babies for one or two months, but in their words, they need to spend money to buy a rest. Similarly, when Xiao Wang buys samples of children's underwear in shopping malls, he will occasionally encounter the "brainwashing" of shopping guide.

Xiao Wang and other colleagues are very clear in mind that the survey results will have a direct impact on the future development of the brand, so careful and meticulous is the most important thing they should pay attention to in the entire sampling process.

Before each quality inspection, the China Consumer Association must have a market survey, and make detailed preparations at the same time, among which the "heavy play" is a sampling plan. The China Consumer Association's sampling plan is generally formulated for three situations: first, sampling the quality of clothing with high consumer concern; two, sampling some of the technology and quality infringing categories appearing in the market recently; and three, conducting spot checks on the more specialized technical applications that consumers can hardly distinguish in the near future. These preparations are not only responsible to consumers, but also to enterprises. At the same time, the selected products should have a certain market penetration rate and be sold in representative shopping malls or clothing markets in the first tier cities, so as to help more consumers to refer to the results of random sampling.

"We will publicized the quality of the brand products that the customers are more concerned with, so that they will have more influence and coverage and will benefit more families." Xiao Wang smiled and said, "and when we want to test the quality of certain products, we will try to publicized the results before the product is launched in large quantities. The result is timeliness, allowing consumers to know which brands are more reliable before buying."

When carrying a few infant brand shopping bags down the elevator, Xiao Wang will also secretly remember the price and promotional price of these children's clothes, because both the products that are being sold at a price or the products of promotion should have absolute quality assurance. The reason why these small details are concerned is Xiao Wang's "mysterious customer" hoping to make the test results more detailed. After the sample of children's clothing is bought, the China Association of consumers will send these samples to the authoritative testing organization for quality inspection, and the quality inspection department will issue corresponding test results. BabyQ, Royal treasure, love, Disney, San Bao Du Lun, Rabbi, Ying Shi, all these brands were very much concerned by Xiao Wang during that time, and their quality results were good or bad after the final inspection.

"Our Consumer Association's sampling inspection tries to make the most comprehensive inspection of the products, hoping to let all the details of the problem easy to get consumers to know. Usually after the sampling inspection will not be re examined, because we also stressed that sampling represents only the quality of the samples at that time, does not represent the quality of all the products of the brand. Unless some enterprises are dissatisfied with the results, raise objections and issue relevant evidence, we will review them. " Turning to the question of re examination, Xiao Wang also made corresponding answers.

In the process of sampling the quality of children's underwear, what impressed Xiao Wang is that some clothing enterprises will purchase needle checking machines to detect broken needles in order to prevent broken needles in clothing, and such measures can not be done by small workshops. She said: "from this point of view, clothing companies still want to do well in their products." {page_break}

Why does the baby side "shrink"?

Recently, the China Association of consumers announced the results of the comparison of 20 kinds of children's knitted underwear sold on the Beijing market.

In the face of quality problems, many clothing brands believe that they have been adhering to the principle of strict control, and no longer serve as the main selling point of brand publicity. But almost every year when the quality inspection department conducts random checks on clothing, there will be various undesirable results. Even a batch of products from some famous international brands has been exposed by the industrial and commercial quality inspection departments. Why does this happen? How does the enterprise view the quality?

Beijing famous baby underwear brand baby Fang Xi in this test, also appeared the shrinkage rate is not up to standard situation, learned this news, baby Fang Xi executive general manager Peng Shuo did not evade, frankly accepted the fact, and timely through the communication with the Consumer Association, to improve self inspection procedures to strengthen their own quality control. But in the face of the media, he mentioned the helpless quality of enterprises.

Upstream and downstream joint efforts to check quality

As a child's father, Peng Shuo knows that the tender skin of infants needs comfortable clothing protection. If the quality of underwear is not able to pass, it will be a slow torment for infants and young children who will not express themselves. The baby Fang Xi brand was created by Peng Shuo's mother, as the second generation successor of the enterprise. He was deeply influenced by his mother and accumulated a lot of experience. He has been vain, and has made different efforts, financing and expansion in order to expand the market share of the enterprise. But after a period of trying, he gradually felt that brand enterprises need not expand rapidly, and down-to-earth is more important for the deep development of brands. Indeed, over the past two years, Chinese garment enterprises have gone through a lot of impetuous expansion and have begun to return to the quality of deep ploughing products. Peng believes that it is a long way to make a solid brand and improve the quality of products, so that more consumers can enjoy high-quality products at a lower price. This is the social responsibility that enterprises should bear.

Why can such brands be detected with a shrinkage of 8.2% and boarded the black list? Pure cotton has always been the preferred fabric for Chinese consumers. Wearing comfortable cotton is an important factor for mothers to pay attention to when buying children's underwear. Because consumers are keen on pure cotton products, and in order to cater to the consumption characteristics of consumers, the baby enterprises use pure cotton as the main raw material for underwear. Once the plant fibers in pure cotton are immersed in water, they will expand, and the fibers will become thicker, and their length will be shortened. Their hydrophilic properties are made of pure cotton underwear with strong elasticity. At the same time, clothing will shrink in the process of production. In spinning, weaving, printing and dyeing, cotton cloth will be deformed due to a series of mechanical stretching and compression. These deformation will be more stable in dry condition. Once wet or hot, the deformation part will recover quickly and shrink.

Peng Shuo has a deep understanding of the baby underwear industry under the mother's words and deeds, and the scale of China's baby underwear industry is not large. The enterprises often take independent research and development, while fabrics and customized production are allocated to the upstream and downstream enterprises. Even the most influential baby underwear brand in China also adopts this cooperative production mode. The Chinese baby underwear brand has not enough strength to integrate the upstream and downstream chains. What the brand enterprises can do is only one chain. The quality of the upstream and downstream brands is controlled by the weak brand of baby underwear brand enterprises, and the quality of the products needs all the chains of the industry to work together to control. If the quality of baby underwear products can not be well controlled, maybe in the near future, it will not only be products, but the whole baby underwear market.

Therefore, the baby side is very strict in carrying out three customs control. From the root cause, we should strictly control the raw materials, block the loss of leftovers, control the production and carry out meticulous management, seize the factory clearance, and carry out product inspection meticulously. The shrinkage of baby underwear is affected by raw materials, density, yarn thickness, production technology and other factors. It is understood that the baby Fang Xi in the production process attaches great importance to self-examination and self-control, so that every process has a unified standard. In addition, the shopping malls are very demanding on the brand. Every single product that the baby likes has corresponding test reports, and the shrinkage rate is controlled within the national regulations.

Make your umbrella bigger.

Quality testing has opened a protective umbrella for babies, and the results of fair testing have also set high requirements and strict standards for enterprises. After the annual black check list, there will always be the same or different brands. Why does this happen? Due to the heavy blow of the relevant departments, some black hearted cotton and garbage fibers which directly harm consumers' physical and mental health have gradually disappeared. However, due to interest driven and low purchasing power in rural areas, some fake and inferior products are still banned. On the other hand, consumers are often deterred by the price of hundreds of millions of dollars in the quality of brand baby underwear. They often yield to the former in the contradiction between shyness and maintaining health.

In today's price war, companies that operate in good faith are even at the edge of losses. Profit is the most basic condition for an enterprise to survive. In order to get more profits, compressing cost is the most direct way. To control the shrinkage of fabric, it is necessary to undergo a pre shrinking process. This process will spend a lot of money no matter whether it is spent in the process or professional and technical personnel. The cost increases by 7% to 8% for an enterprise plus a shrink procedure, which will naturally lead to a larger difference than the fabric price without pre shrinking process. Therefore, many enterprises will save this process by reducing expenses.

Consumers want to buy products with high quality and low price. Enterprises can only control costs continuously, control costs on the basis of quality assurance, and sell products at low prices to consumers. This is a rather difficult task for children's underwear enterprises with a very small scale. This also causes enterprises to face a dilemma in the face of quality and survival. As an enterprise, Peng Shuo put forward the realistic problem of reducing the cost of enterprises.

He also asked questions about spot checks. The baby underwear market is just like a Pyramid. The brand enterprises only live in the upper level of Pyramid. There are many baby underwear which have not been stationed in the shopping mall supporting this Pyramid. The choice of many consumers is often the broader Pyramid bottom. The brands that are sampled every year are only minority. How many of the products that have not been inspected do not conform to the national standard? The baby underwear brand on the blacklist is just the tip of the iceberg. The commodities sampled by the quality supervision department usually come from the brand that is stationed in the shopping mall. In the whole consumer market, the baby underwear brand is only a small part, and there are a large number of other sales channels without labels and without any quality testing products, such as wholesale market, online shopping platform and so on.

In the choice of cost compression and survival, although profit is very important for enterprises, consumers will lose trust in the brand. For enterprises, this is undoubtedly a greater loss. Pang Shuo firmly believes that ensuring quality, controlling costs and allowing consumers to make themselves stronger will make the market bigger. The annual quality test is only a phased quiz. The good cognition of consumers to enterprises is the test that enterprises are always faced with. Instead of giving a qualified answer to the quality supervision department, the more important thing is to let every product be reassured by consumers so that consumers can enjoy the benefits of health products. This requires concerted efforts from both industries and departments to jointly control products and jointly contribute to the high quality of the baby underwear market.