Most overseas buyers who get burned sourcing from India were not cheated by a factory. They were cheated by somebody who was never a factory in the first place.
The pattern is consistent. A well-built website, convincing photographs, a responsive salesperson, competitive pricing — and behind it, an office with three desks that places your order with whichever unit has capacity that month. Sometimes it works. Often quality swings between shipments because it is not the same factory twice, and nobody can tell you why because nobody involved actually made the garment.
Here is how to tell the difference before your money moves. If you are earlier than this and still deciding whether to source from India at all, the wider buyer’s guide covers minimums, lead times and costs first.
1. Ask which stages happen in their building
Not “do you manufacture” — everyone says yes to that. Ask specifically: where is the fabric knitted, where is it dyed, where is it cut, where is it stitched, where is it printed, where is it packed. A real manufacturer answers immediately and without qualification. An agent gets vague, or answers with “we have a partner unit for that”, which is fine if they say so up front and a red flag if you had to drag it out of them.
Nobody does every stage in-house — even large exporters outsource some dyeing at peak. What matters is whether they will tell you which stages those are. Ours are listed stage by stage on our About page, which is the least any factory should be willing to put in writing.
2. Ask for a live video walkthrough, unscheduled
Photographs prove nothing; anyone can buy stock images or photograph someone else’s floor. A video call where they walk you through the unit while you watch is much harder to fake. Ask for it on short notice rather than booking it a week ahead.
Watch for whether the person holding the phone knows the floor. Someone who works there navigates without thinking. Someone who does not looks for the way.
3. Check the address against the company registration
Indian companies are registered with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, and GST registration details are publicly searchable against a GSTIN. Ask for the GSTIN and the Import Export Code (IEC). Both take two minutes to verify online. A manufacturer will hand these over without hesitation — you need them for your paperwork anyway.
4. Ask what happens when a lot fails inspection
The answer tells you whether they have ever had a lot fail, which they have, because everyone has. A factory will describe the actual rework process: what gets re-cut, what gets re-stitched, who signs it off, and how it affects the ship date. A vague reassurance that “quality is guaranteed” means you are talking to a salesperson.
5. Get the lead time broken down
“Forty-five days” is not a lead time, it is a number. Ask for it split: fabric knitting and dyeing, cutting, stitching, decoration, finishing, packing, and the buffer. A manufacturer knows these figures because they schedule against them — ours are published with the minimums rather than quoted on request. Anyone giving you a round number with no breakdown is guessing on your behalf.
6. Send a small trial order first
The single most reliable test, and the one buyers skip most often because it feels slow. Three hundred pieces of one style in one colour will tell you more than six weeks of due diligence: whether the sample matched the bulk, whether the ship date held, whether the packing was right, and how they behaved when something went slightly wrong — which it will.
Any supplier who resists a trial order or prices it punitively is telling you something.
7. Appoint a third-party inspector
SGS, Bureau Veritas, Intertek and several smaller Indian agencies will inspect your goods before the container is sealed, at a cost that is trivial next to the value of the shipment. A factory treats this as normal. A supplier who becomes defensive about it is a supplier to walk away from.
The inspection report also tells you something the factory never will: what the AQL failure rate actually was, rather than what you were told it was.
8. Ask about shade continuity on repeat orders
If you are running a uniform or corporate programme, this matters more than anything else on this list. Ask how they match a repeat order — against the original approved lab dip, or against the last batch produced? Matching against the last batch means colour drifts a fraction every season, and by year three your stock does not match itself. Pin down the fabric spec itself at the same time; shade and weight are the two things a repeat order quietly loses.
9. Watch how they handle the first bad news
Somewhere in your first order, something will go slightly wrong: a yarn delay, a shade that needs re-dipping, a print that fails wash test. The supplier who tells you on the day it happens is worth keeping. The one who tells you a week before shipment, when it is too late for you to react, is not — regardless of how good the price was.
We are a manufacturer in Tirupur, so we have an obvious interest in you asking these questions. Ask them of us too. If you are earlier than this and still working out what to make first, start there instead. If you want to begin with a trial order, send an inspector, or arrange a factory visit, say so and we will set it up — all three are normal here.
Keep reading
Clothing manufacturers in India: a buyer's guide to sourcing, MOQs and lead times
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How to find a clothing manufacturer (without getting burned)
The order of operations that works: define the garment, shortlist factories, verify them, sample, then place a small first order. Written by a factory, including the parts that are not flattering to us.
How to choose a t-shirt supplier for South Africa
What actually matters when you are importing tees into South Africa: sea leg, GSM for the climate, shade consistency across repeat orders, and the paperwork your clearing agent will want.