Earlier this year we sample a prospective client according to the specifications they gave us and we failed miserably. We supplied exactly what they requested and the wrap failed as it tore too easily. A little perplexed we were slightly upset as a lot of time and effort had already been put into landing this client as a customer.
I am a sucker for punishment as I hate any type of failure and will never just move on and leave something that is unfinished. This was a 6 month break from our last contact as one of the two contacts had left so I thought we need to act differently this time around. My son who is working with me must think I am a little touched upstairs going back to the same well each time and not achieving anything. When you are 90% there then why not as the hard work has already been done and it is now a process of solving the puzzle.
The person in charge agreed we could take this pallet wrap roll pictured above for analyses so we could see for ourselves what we were up against. The textile mill for all they knew was they were being supplied what was stated on the label of the product. A Super Saver 400mm wide a 1000 meter in length and a 11 microns thick plastic wrap roll. This is used on a machine which wraps bales for storage or boxed garments for dispatch.
This morning my business partner confirmed the same roll I had sent down had arrived and the testing had started. This is the deal breaker right here and why we have to revert to doing this type of testing. If all suppliers were honest and above board things would be far easier to compete against and they do this on purpose as most of their clients are clueless.
I had to wait patiently for a good 30 minutes and I thought I would share the results with you because then you will understand what I deal with daily. This roll is 400 mm wide which is correct and the length is 762 meters long so missing 238 meters or more as we always give a few extra meters per roll. The thickness was 15 micron and explains why our sample tore during testing and this roll did not. The weight of the roll including the cardboard center core should be 5.6 kilograms and theirs was 5.1 kilograms. Already they are being robbed 10% by weight and is nowhere near the specifications labelled on the product.
The solution is to supply the exact same specs back to the textile mill and quote accordingly without any labelled specifications. We will just label it in the name of this textile mill instead and keep this specification on record. This is actually really good news finding a fake specification because it has prevented us from competing on a level playing field and this is now game over for our competitor.
The only thing holding this textile mill back from ordering from us has been a "quality" issue even though it was more about the wrong specification which gave us no chance to compete. This is proper karma as we know they cannot compete against our pricing and I will gladly be informing them hen I return with a fresh batch of samples later this week or next week. This time I will hand around for testing and now for once I am looking forward to the 4 hour round trip. The perseverance will pay off and most definitely justifies why you need to keep battling away.