Design

Crew prides itself on understanding and reflecting key fashion trends on the high street.

Continual innovation and our ability to translate leading fashion-house designs to high-street trends are crucial to our business success. We currently have twelve in-house designers who analyse the demographics of our customers and develop fashion ranges that they believe will strongly appeal to the consumer. All of our designers specialise in specific product categories and work directly with our customers to ensure each range co-ordinates well within the store and the shapes, prints and graphics reflect the latest seasons' trends.

Our products span the high street and using the regular sales feedback we receive from our customers, we are able to translate this into next season's to predict new best sellers. All our designers keep abreast with the latest fashions by not only having access to latest design forums, but also with regular international trips and visits to leading European trade shows. This allows them to determine and reflect all the latest international styles in their mood boards and concept ranges. At concept stage, our designers work side-by-side with the sales and QC team to anticipate any potential challenges may arise in the production process and to ensure the fabric, trims and embellishments can meet the customers' target price-points.

Manufacturing

Crew currently is partners with manufacturers in seven countries: China, India, Turkey, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam and Egypt. We form solid partnerships and seek to build longevity with all our factories through investment in time, processes and infrastructure within the factories. We work our factories to help build understanding of best practice and the technical levels that we expect. Crew fulfils a full audit on every factory it partners with and grades each factory accordingly.

Each factory must adhere to Crew's social and corporate responsibility policies and safety procedures and regular checks are performed to verify this. We also carry out specific audits based on ISO9001 standards and the technical and ethical requirements of our customers. We employ independent audit organisations, such as ITS, BV, Asia Inspection and SGS, to undertake full factory audits and to encourage our factories to meet industry acknowledged accreditations, and are members of audit organisations such as SEDEX, SECURA and ICE. We work with fabric mills, dye houses and print houses that are Oeko-tex accredited. Any follow-up points from audits that are undertaken both internally and independently are chased with the factory and monitored until conclusion by our Technical and Factory Audit team.

We implement a strict metal-free policy for all our garments, through tight needle checking procedures, metal free areas, tool logging and auditing, both in the factories and in the UK. We work closely with our factories to monitor safety and advise action in cases where incidents arise or risk assessments highlight potential areas of concern.

All our factories are continuously observed and evaluated on their process execution. We follow the performance of each of our factories and provide regular feedback on their successes and areas for improvement, with development plans for them to action.

Sales

Our sales managers work closely with the buyers to develop new ranges and to determine the product styling. We work with a wide variety of fabric mills, factories and countries and therefore are able to provide independent advice which product we believe will be best suited to our customers' requirements. Once the initial concepts have been agreed, designs have been decided upon and the range has been determined, we create initial samples to provide the look and feel of the final garment to provide the booking certainty.

All our sales team are specialists in their product area. We believe our success in building lasting relationships with customers is due to our sales team working closely with the buyers, understanding the consumer demographics and being single-minded in delivering the high-streets best sellers through our emphasis on design, quality and value.

Dispatch

We operate out of our historic Lister's Mill in Bradford. Shipping, dispatch and warehousing are managed by our central operations team, who have over 30 years of experience of working with high-street, catalogue and value retailers. Our operations team are able to accommodate the shipping and dispatch requirements of all our customers, which range from FOB (free-on-board) in the country of origin, direct delivery to customer, carton call-offs, to individual picking and packing of garments for direct dispatch to individual stores.

We operate a UK bonded warehouse and therefore duty is paid on the goods when they leave our bonded warehouse to enter the picking and packing area or when they are dispatched to the customer.

All goods are checked on entering the warehouse against the approved gold seals by the operations team. An initial AQL is performed on all goods, including the packaging, label details and make-up of the garment. The results are provided to the category relevant teams and if there are any concerns over the quality, packaging or detail on the garments, a further check will be carried out. In rare instances where issues arise, the appropriate action will be taken to remedy the situation. This may involve remedial work, relabeling or redressing the garment. This work is usually scheduled and conducted in-house by our production and re-work team.

Our warehouse and production teams are also working towards ISO9000 certification and are trained to undertake the roles required of them. The majority of our team are full-time employees, but temporary staff are recruited in peak periods to assist with the warehouse, production and rework.

Merchandise

The merchandise team provide the cornerstone of all our orders and work seamlessly with the factories, off-shore offices and customers to ensure each element of the order is fulfilled and signed-off. Our UK based merchandisers project-manage the critical path and ensure that the necessary information is available at each stage-gate in the production process. Issues are highlighted as they arise and solutions are proposed and discussed to resolve any concerns as they arise. Regular critical path meetings are held with the customer to inform them of the progress of the orders. The merchandiser also works with the buyer to help decipher quantities and delivery dates and to manage the stock call-off into the stores.

Fitting & Sealing

Our dedicated QC team work with the factories to manage the fitting and sealing process of the orders. Regular training programs are undertaken by all our technical team to refresh and update their knowledge in areas such as fire safety regulation, test reports and restricted substances. Our experienced technicians work on the patterns to get the most attractive and flattering fit, on the fabric and trims to ensure that fibre quality and durability meets the expectations of our customers, on the garment grading across the range and on the monitoring of quality and sizing through-out the production process. Our garment blocks are determined with the approval of the customer at the start of each season and provide the basis for our fits and sizing of the styles. The QC workbooks log all the specifications and amendments to the style and track the on-going technical specifications of the product. Regular visits to the factories along with close collaboration with our off-shore team guarantees that the goods are monitored through the process and are manufactured to the exacting specifications agreed between the customer and ourselves.

Back-Office Functions

All our IT, Finance, HR and general sourcing takes place at a group level. Our customers have direct access to these functions, who can address their needs in those specific areas. Our IT systems run locally and we operate SAP as our financial accounting system, and StyleMAN as our stock merchandising system. We have various other bespoke systems which manage our design storage and customs and warehouse management. We have a firewall in place and limit access from external sources to individual servers to minimise the risk of security breaches. Our accounting team manage the financial procedures of the organisation, including currency buying, cash-flow, credit insurance and managing debt. A tight control is placed on all expenditure and the transferring of funds to ensure that they are legitimate. None of the Haddow Holdings companies endorse or support any type of bribery or corruption in its business activities in any of its home or international markets. We appreciate that we form a critical part of our customers supply chain function and have crisis plans in place so that our businesses are able to continue in the event of an emergency situation and we are able to minimise the disruption to clients as much as possible. Please do not hesitate to contact one of the team if you have any further questions about the way we operate or to discuss your range requirements.