Tests and the rules you must meet

Two different things get confused at this step, and they have different consequences. Tests tell you whether the product is what you specified. The rules of your selling market decide whether the product is allowed to be sold there at all. A failed test costs you a negotiation. A broken rule costs you a shipment.

The tests worth having on home textiles, each against a named method and with the grade you require written into the order: dimensional stability, which is shrinkage after a stated number of washes; colour fastness to washing; colour fastness to rubbing, also called crocking, which is the colour coming off onto something else and is the one that matters most on dark and printed goods; colour fastness to light for anything that will sit in a window, which means every curtain; pilling and abrasion; absorbency and drying rate for towels; fibre composition, because a blend claim is checkable; and for filled goods the fill weight and whether the shell is downproof.

Name the laboratory and say who pays, in the order. A test report from a laboratory neither side chose is not evidence of anything.

Then the rules, which are yours as the importer and not the mill's. Fibre content and care labelling are legal requirements in the country you sell into, with their own permitted names, tolerances and formats. Filled bedding and anything sold for a child carry extra requirements in several markets, flammability among them, and those are the ones that stop goods at a border rather than merely embarrass you. Which rules apply is decided by your product and your destination, not by your supplier, so find out from the regulator in your selling market before the specification is signed, because several of them change the product rather than the paperwork.

Product certificates such as an approved textile safety scheme are commercial reassurance and, increasingly, a customer expectation. They are not a substitute for the destination rules, and a certificate number should always be checked on the issuing scheme's own site. The outside links under this step do exactly that.