On January 3rd, our team techpacker visited a sample room in Tsuen Wan. Our team has seven members. They are Saral, Tracy, Iris, Jaimi, Albert, Miao and Fei. For most of us, we do not have the similar experience like this. It’s a wonderful trip for all our team members. All of us open our eyes to see and open our ears to listen. We all learn from this wonderful trip. We will share everything about this wonderful trip with you.

See & Listen

We arrived at the sample room on 2:00 PM. First, the owner of the sample room introduced some basic information for our team. We visited every workroom that the owner has. This period was the most busiest season for them. Although the owner was very busy, she was still glad to be our guide. She allowed us to ask questions if their workers had time to answer our questions. Following pictures show the workroom.

All of us were excited to see many things and tools in which we had ever seen before. We were curious about everything and our team members, especially Albert, wanted to take photos with these things, for example: sewing machines, models and cloth sample.

The following picture shows a cloth sample that the sample room does for a designer. Can you guess the worth of it? All our team members were astonished by its worth. The value of this sample is 10,000 HKD. We all played a joke：We should take this sample away.

All team members asked a lot of questions and workers were very glad to answer our questions. All workers are very nice and kind. At last, we visited the workroom where the owner was working. There is a embroidery machine in that workroom. A man was glad to show how the machine works. It is amazing for us because most of us see the machine and it works firstly. We also asked the owner many questions and she answered our question as possible as she can.

It is a really amazing and magic trip for all team members. Our team member, Albert, always play scissors and it feels like he want to destroy all scissors. The campaign is full of fun and our members always laugh out loud.

Learn & Share

At the same time, we learn many things through Q&A with owner and workers. The following is summary of what we learned. I believe that following contents can help you know something what you do not know.

The customer of this sample room

This sample room’s customer mainly is fashion designer and some agents who work for American and European fashion companies. Agents are those people who graduate from university. They mainly act like translators between foreign fashion companies and this Hong Kong sample room.

The sample room lacks of labor forces and skilled workers & Why

The sample room lacks of labor forces and skilled workers. Because business that this sample room does lacks profitable and workers might not earn much money, young generation would not like to work in the sample room. At the same time, labor forces and skilled workers in the sample room are old people and they would like to spend more time on their family. So it is another reason that the sample room lacks labor forces and skilled workers.

Hong Kong government’s policy

The sample room get support from Hong Kong government is very little. Policy in Hong Kong does not good for sample room to develop.

The sample room’s capability currently

The sample room agrees to do orders that less than 3000 because the sample room lacks of labor forces and skilled workers. The sample room always receives one or two orders.

Whole process of the sample room

The whole process is: fashion designers or agents give tech pack to the sample room and sample room does the sample based on tech pack. If fashion designers or agents do not satisfy with the sample. They will write the comments on tech pack and the sample room will revise the sample. The extra cost will be paid by fashion designers or agents if the sample room does not make mistakes.

Factories (located in Chinese mainland, Vietnam, etc.) advantage & disadvantage

Factories located in Chinese mainland, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia will do if there are a lot of orders. However, the sample room in like Chinese mainland does not have enough capability to do high quality samples.

Unique way of creating tech pack

Some skilled workers in that sample room sometimes create their own tech pack instead of receiving fashion designers’ or agents’ tech pack.

Where are materials that are needed to do sample come from?

Most materials that doing samples need are supplied by fashion designers or agents. However, sometime the sample room will source materials by their own worker. Frequency is about once a month.

What do you think of our wonderful trip? Do you learn something from my article? I hope you can leave your messages about this article and communicate with me. We can share and learn from each other. You also can find out more information and learn from our website, www.techpacker.com