Quality & inspection
We open the cartons before the container is sealed.
Five checkpoints between the brief and the ship. None of them are optional, and the pre-shipment report reaches you before the balance payment is due — which is the only order that makes it useful.
The checkpoints
Where we look, and when.
Stage 01
Factory audit
Before a factory joins the catalogue
Someone from Vertex walks the floor. We look at the machinery for the process you need, the certifications on the wall and whether they match the paperwork, and how the last customer's rejects were handled.
Stage 02
Pre-production sample
Before the run is booked
A physical sample against your specification, photographed and shipped to you. Nothing goes on the line until you have signed it off — including artwork, colour and any decoration.
Stage 03
In-line check
At roughly 20% of the run
Catching a fault at twenty percent costs a day. Catching it at a hundred percent costs the run. We check early on anything with tooling, colour matching or a new spec.
Stage 04
Pre-shipment inspection
Once the run is complete, before payment of the balance
A randomised sample drawn to an agreed AQL, measured against the specification, with a photographed defect schedule. You see the report before the balance is due.
Stage 05
Loading supervision
At the container
Carton counts, condition, and the seal number recorded against the booking. It is the last moment anything can be corrected without a claim.
Plain English
What an AQL actually means.
Nobody inspects every unit of a fifty-thousand-piece run. An Acceptable Quality Limit is the agreed rule for how many pieces get pulled, and how many faults in that sample condemn the batch.
We set it with you at the brief, in writing, split by how serious a fault is. A scuff on a mailer box is not the same as a lid that does not seal, and the numbers should reflect that.
Typical standard
- Critical
- Unsafe, or illegal to sell
- 0
- Major
- A customer would reject it
- 2.5
- Minor
- Cosmetic, would not be returned
- 4.0
Limits are set per order. These are the defaults we start from.
When it fails
A failed inspection is not your problem to negotiate.
If a batch misses the standard, the factory reworks or replaces it at their cost. That conversation happens between us and them, in Mandarin, against a contract we hold — not between you and a supplier you have never met.
You get the report, the photographs, the revised schedule, and a recommendation. If the delay breaks your date, we say so immediately rather than hoping it catches up.