Working with The/Studio means on-the-factory-floor access to some of world’s greatest apparel makers — many of which are used by brands you know and love.

We’re always believed that custom manufacturing should be three things: simple, high-quality and ethical. If we fail to do any of those things during your order, we’ve fallen short of our standards.

To help you know what you expect during your order, we’ve defined a few terms and standard to which we hold ourselves accountable — on every order.

Quality Standards

We measure quality of our orders two different ways. The first is adherence to your design. During all orders (unless otherwise requested), you’ll receive a design mockup, a technical mockup and either a physical or photo sample. If the final product that you receive deviates from your approved mockups and samples, we will consider the order to be low-quality.

We also judge your order’s manufacturing quality by a variety of industry standards. While an order may adhere to your design, there are many traits we will not accept from our factory partners as a final product: unintentionally frayed edges, poor workmanship, sub-standard materials are just a few.

In industry lingo, these two standards are referred to as “tolerance” and “precision,” respectively. Tolerance is the allowable deviation from a standard in manufacturing — in this case, the sample(s) you approve are the standard. E.g.: if an order calls for a certain hue of red, and a green fabric is used instead, it falls outside of our standard of tolerance. If a slightly different hue of red is used, we’ll work with you on deciding whether or not our standards of tolerance were violated.

Precision measures the quality of a large volume of products, and protects you from simple defects. Since our orders often involve hundreds, if not thousands, of individual pieces, we cannot evaluate the equality of every piece. Instead, we check a standardized percentage of your order count depending on its size; if we find more than a certain amount of flawed pieces, the order is sent back to the factory for a redo no matter how closely the flawless pieces resemble your standard.

We believe in fashion quality – real apparel and goods that can last long and look great the entire time. When working with customers who expect “luxury label” quality (i.e., orders approaching 0% deviation and 100% precision), we’re happy to provide the extra guidance often necessitated by these projects. However, we ask customers to understand that this level of involvement often requires a longer turnaround time.

Rules for Refunds and Redos

Tolerance and precision of orders can be subjective issues, so The/Studio operates by two principles to help customers understand how their order is protected from major defects and comfortably predict that quality of your future orders. Should an issue arise with your order, these principles will be referenced by your customer representative during the resolution process.

- If the order value is greater than $5,000, you will approve your custom item at four different stages: the design mockup, the technical mockup, the photo of a physical production and the physical sample itself, which we will mail to you. This is the only way ensure 100% compliance with your expectations before the full production run. Should the final product deviate from your physical and photo samples, you are entitled to either a refund or a redo.
  
  You have the right to skip approval of the physical sample, reducing your turnaround time by the number of days that it would take to mail it to you. However, if the final product received does not match your expectations, The/Studio is not liable to provide you with a redo or refund.

If the order value is less than $5,000, you will approve your custom item at three different stages: the design mockup, the technical mockup and the photo of a physical production. You may have a physical sample mailed to you; however, you must pay for shipping. Should the final product deviate greatly from your approved photo or physical sample (e.g., different spelling, different color), you are entitled to either a refund or a redo. If the product deviates only slightly from your approved photo sample (e.g., slightly different font size, slightly different color hue), you’ll need to file a dispute with your customer representative as these differences are unfortunately less objective than major defects and are often within industry standards of tolerance.

Social Compliance Standards

Unlike many supply chain partners, we are physically present in all of our partner factories. Between regular visits and no-notice spot visits, each factory partner is held to a rigorous standard of environmental, social and legal compliance. When we find issues, we aid first-time offenders in remedying them — repeat offenders are removed from our supply chain.

Trust is the foundation of our relationship with our clients. Our standards include, but are not limited to, the below ideals. When onboarding a new factory partner, we seriously consider their current adhesion to these ideals and their ability to continue doing so.

No child labor or youth labor. Any production partner we work with will follow all local laws and rules regarding working hours and working conditions for minors.
No involuntary labor. Our production partners will not use involuntary labor, including (but not limited to) slave labor, prison labor, indentured labor or forced labor.
Humane working conditions. We work only with production partners who provide humane working hours for their employees and who do not use any form of physical manipulation, psychological coercion or otherwise intimidate their workers.
Non-discrimination. We do not accept the presence or tolerance of discrimination on any basis, including (but not limited to):

Race
Color
Ethnicity
National origin
Religion
Gender
Gender identity
Sexual orientation
Disability
Any other characteristic protected under applicable law

The/Studio cannot guarantee the conditions under which materials used by our factory partners were manufactured, unless otherwise specified. The/Studio does not currently audit suppliers or 3rd-party partners working with our direct partners, and we do not require direct partners to demonstrate that the materials incorporated into their products comply with the laws in the country or countries in which such suppliers do business. The/Studio is not responsible for any production partners chosen by direct partners.