Reporting for Textiles That Starts With Samples Sent and Buyers Gone Quiet

Ask a mill what it spent on development last season and you will get an estimate. Ask which buyers those samples converted with and you will get an anecdote. Textile selling runs on samples, and the ratio between swatches sent and orders received is the most consequential unmeasured number in the trade. Everything below is built around making that ratio and its close relatives visible weekly.

Sample dispatch to order conversion

Samples sent, by buyer and quality, and the share that produced a confirmed order. It decides where development capacity goes next season. A bad number is one buyer absorbing a large share of sampling with a conversion close to nothing, which is a conversation to have with the buying office rather than a reason to keep sampling harder.

Buyer reorder gaps

Each account measured against its own ordering rhythm, with those that have exceeded it listed by value. It decides the call list. A bad number is several established accounts past their usual interval at once, which is rarely coincidence and usually means a competitor has been quoting into your customer base.

Enquiry to quotation turnaround by quality

Hours from enquiry to a costed quotation, split by quality and construction. It decides whether costing needs support. A bad number is one quality consistently slower than the rest, which normally points at a costing input that has to be chased from production every single time.

Quoted against realised rate

Rate per metre or piece as quoted and as confirmed, by buyer, quality and agent. It decides where quoting authority sits. A bad number is a small, consistent gap on nearly every order, which is far more expensive over a season than the occasional large concession everyone remembers.

Loss reasons from a closed list

Why enquiries and developments died. It decides whether the problem is commercial, process or capacity. A bad number is rate dominating while shade approval and lead time are recorded rarely, because in most mills those two are the real cause and they get absorbed into a price conversation nobody wants to reopen.

Sample to order conversion, because it addresses the cost that is invisible and because it needs only a small habit: every sample dispatched gets logged against the enquiry, with the buyer and quality. Reorder gaps come second, and they need nothing new at all if order history is already in the system.

These reports should change what merchandising and mill planning do next week, not simply describe last week.

Every sample logged against an enquiry with buyer, quality and date. One owner per account, including accounts that arrive through agents. Quality and construction recorded as structured fields rather than typed into a description, otherwise nothing can be grouped. Quoted rate stored at the time of quoting, not overwritten at confirmation. Loss reasons from a closed list. Export and domestic tagged separately from the first entry.

Enquiries received by month, quotations sent per merchant, and a chart of orders by region are standard and useless. Quotation counts encourage quoting rather than winning. Regional charts matter only if you price or plan by region. The useful test is whether the report changes a sampling decision, a call, a rate or a production slot. If it changes none of those, it is decoration and it makes the meeting longer without making it better.

It does not plan looms, schedule dyeing, manage stock, produce packing lists or handle export documentation and accounts. Those remain in your production and accounting systems. This is the commercial record that sits above them and answers why an order did or did not happen.

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