A contract manufacturer can provide multifold benefits to your business. They can increase your speed and efficiency and decrease your overhead costs by a huge margin, but for that, you’ll have to filter out the one that works best for your requirements. Especially if you are a new business, you might fall into a bad contract that can hurt your business and destabilize your position in the market. Today we’ll list down all the crucial aspects one should look for in a contract manufacturer. Hopefully, this will help you make better decisions for your business.
What Important Factors Should One Consider?
We will keep this short and simple; one by one, you’ll read through the essential points to consider before entering into a contract with the contract manufacturer.
Adaptability
Depending on your business’s growth, your contract manufacturer must be able to scale up and down their operations to meet the desired output. The manufacturer must also have a diverse catalog of products that they can adapt and modify according to your needs and requirements.
Reputation
Contract manufacturing requires years of expertise and experience. Always go with a reputable contract manufacturer; after all, you’ll be putting your money and your business’s strength in their hands. Go with a manufacturer who has worked for prominent brands in your business space; check their reviews on platforms like Google Business Review and Trustpilot. Check their portfolio of previous products and projects they have worked on, and what was their success rate?
Communication
Establishing a proper communication channel with a contract manufacturer is essential for your product’s quality. Make sure that the contract manufacturer you chose is willing to adjust and tweak the production as per your suggestions and evolving expectations. Your very first meeting with the manufacturer will set the tone for the rest of your partnership and growth.
Expenses
You’ll need to sort out the budgeting for production properly. Make sure to ask your contract manufacturer to give you full, transparent costs that cover everything from procuring the raw material to compliance and regulations to logistics, packaging, etc. Make sure that the contract manufacturer is not adding any hidden costs under terms and conditions that might charge you later on, as this can hinder your funding and growth goals.
Location
The location of your contract manufacturer is crucial to assessing the viability of logistics. Especially if you are planning to launch your own both online stores (Amazon, eBay) and offline stores (Target, Walmart). Having the contract manufacturers near the fulfillment centers will result in low logistic costs and faster deliveries, which will in turn improve your customers’ shopping experiences and your business’s growth more efficiently.
Work Force
The contract manufacturer must have a very skilled labor force. They should be equipped with knowledge and the skill set you use for your products. Talk to the department heads, like the project manager, engineering department head, logistics head, and labeling head, to get an idea of their workforce’s quality and efficiency. Check whether the workforce has proper certifications to work in the industry and has received proper crisis management technology.
Technology and Equipment
Always check the type of machines and technology your contract manufacturer is offering. This will greatly affect the quality and efficiency of the production process. For example, established dietary supplement manufacturers like TrustWorks deploy high-capacity machines to manufacture custom gummies, softgels, and tinctures. Owing to their high-quality technology and machine stack, they offer a 4-week turnaround time vs. the regular norm of 8+ weeks in the industry and have a production capability of 50 million + gel capsules per month. Being experts in bottling, labeling, and packaging services has also made them go to contract manufacturers for various big brands like GNC, Kroger, and Sprouts Farmers Market.
Certifications and Quality Management System
Always check the quality check mechanism a contract manufacturer has in place. Ask them what kind of quality checks they do on the production line, how they ensure that there’s no contamination, what parameters they have to evaluate the quality of the produced goods, and what their risk management methods are if something goes wrong during the production phase. Make sure the manufacturing facility being used by the contract manufacturer is ISO and GMP-certified.
Conclusion
We hope this guide will help you assess the contract manufacturers thoroughly before giving them orders for full-scale production. Always be cautious of all the terms and conditions, and get the agreement checked by your legal team before approving. If you are someone who is planning to launch their own dietary supplement brand, then you can contact manufacturers like TrustWorks.
They have ISO-certified and FDA-registered production facilities with well-trained labor and high-tech machinery. They also provide the highest turn-around time of 4 weeks for products like CBD tinctures, supplement gummies, and vitamin softgels, along with the end-to-end bottle, label, and packaging services. That’s all for today, and we wish you good luck on your business growth journey.