Sleepwear Report — Supplier Profile — Sample Pages: Sourcing Sleepwear from China

Supplier Profile: Chaozhou Qiaodong Garment Fty

Chaozhou Qiaodong Garment Fty, ISO 9001:2000-certified and manufacturing for more than 20 years, produces sleepwear alongside casual wear, evening dresses and wedding gowns. Sleepwear accounts for 40 percent of output, and its sale accounted for 80 percent of total turnover; all sleepwear output is exported to OEM clients based mainly in the EU and North America, with Dove of France and Keds of Israel among the major clients. The company, established in 1986 and based in Chaozhou, Guangdong, runs a 500-worker, 20,000 square metre factory five minutes from downtown Chaozhou, with separate workshops for sampling, cutting, sewing, finishing and embroidery, while printing is subcontracted.

The company produces low-end and midrange nightshirts and nightgowns, and pajamas for men and women: knitted designs account for 70 percent of sleepwear output and women's models 80 percent, in pure cotton, satin, polyester and nylon, with fabric sourced mainly in Zhejiang for price and lace, buttons and ribbons sourced within Guangdong. Prices range from US$1.50 to US$5 per piece or set, with an increase of up to 5 percent planned over the following 12 months as material and labor costs rose. An 18-person R&D team, funded at US$40,000 a year and working mainly to develop and improve buyers' designs, also creates its own designs and releases more than 1,000 new styles a year, taking about five days to develop a model, designed mostly by hand. In the sampling workshop 12 workers create patterns to specification, and the cutting section's six US-sourced machines can cut a fabric stack as thick as 20 cm; monthly capacity is 350,000 pieces at 71 percent utilization.

What a Full Profile Adds

The sample shows the profile template at work: company background and markets first, then products with price ranges, then manufacturing and research capability, then outlook. Across all 75 profiles that single template is the point — every manufacturer is examined on the same points, so a buyer can line profiles up and compare export shares, OEM and ODM mix, design capacity, quality systems and price positioning without translating between formats. Details such as a production checklist — lines, research and quality control staff, machinery and processes — turn a profile from a description into an audit summary.

Profiles also connect back to the rest of the report. A supplier's prices can be checked against the product gallery's 137 models and the industry overview's price trends, and its outlook against the supplier survey. When the three agree, a buyer has a supplier worth sampling; when they disagree, the profile has done its other job — showing where to ask harder questions before an order is placed.