Value Added Services
Total Cost of Acquisition (TCOA)
Uniform item costs are merely a single factor in the overall investment that a customer/partner must make in a relationship with a uniform manufacturer/supplier/distributor.
There are many other costs to consider in the overall equation:
- Conversion expense (with a new supplier)
- Resolution of current inventory
- Communication of new program to customer/partner constituency
- Integration and implementation into customer/partner purchasing and accounting systems
- Design, development and sampling of custom and/or new product
- Potential new, proprietary design from sketch/line drawing to production of prototype samples
- Fabric sourcing and sampling
- Development of specifications and technical material for production of apparel
- Order processing costs
- Time it takes to submit an order
- Real-time access to inventory availability
- Web-based or manual order processing
- Invoice processing and payment expense
- Man hours and hard cost expense of processing and paying invoices
- Inventory management
- Outsourced to the supplier of record – includes technology involved in managing inventory, bar-coding and maintaining warehouse space for efficiency in receiving and pick-pack.
- Distribution and on-time delivery
- Outsourced to the supplier of record – includes labor to pick-pack-ship
- Outsourced to the supplier of record – materials for packaging
- Product quality and durability
- Replacement costs on an annual basis according to industry research is 2-3%. A+ School Apparel’s Wear-Tested Guarantee™ mitigates this cost and sends that 2-3% to the customer/partner’s bottom line.
- Prompt and painless issue resolution
- Credits, discounts and rebates issued according to agreed upon schedules