In the world of logistics, Value Added Services (VAS) encompass a wide range of specialised activities performed on products, beyond basic transportation and warehousing. More than just logistics, VAS are custom solutions designed to integrate seamlessly into your supply chain, preparing your stock for sale, enhancing product presentation, and ultimately, delivering exceptional value to both your business and the end-customers.
These services can be crucial for meeting diverse pre-retail and e-tail requirements, often needing businesses to leverage automation and advanced technology to fulfil them. Essentially, VAS transform unpackaged or bulk products into retail-ready items, minimising manual processes, and ensuring greater efficiency and precision.
At Advanced Supply Chain, we provide industry-leading Value-Added Services that have been tailored to meet a wide range of B2B and B2C pre-retail and e-tail requirements across multiple sectors. Our bespoke services not only optimise your products at every stage of the supply chain, but they also streamline operations and reduce the time to market for your goods.
Here’s a glimpse into the wide range of services we provide:
Garment Finishing
With over 2 decades of experience rooted in garment processing, we know the unique challenges of the apparel sector – from delicate fabrics to stubborn transit marks. We’ve developed a comprehensive approach that goes beyond basic cleaning, and our suite of pressing technologies is designed to deliver a flawless finish.
- Spot Cleaning: Targeted removal of small stains, dirt, or imperfections from products, typically garments, to restore them to a saleable condition. Transforms garments with minor imperfections back into saleable stock by treating small areas of dirt or stains without washing the entire product.
- Steam Tunnelling, Dolly Pressing, and Hand-Pressing Services: Professional garment finishing techniques using steam and pressing equipment to remove wrinkles and achieve a flawless, retail-ready appearance.
- Steam Tunnelling: Ideal for high-volume efficiency and impeccable results for hanging garments, quickly removing creases.
- Dolly Pressing: Provides versatility and a professional finish for items requiring a structured look, using inflatable forms to smooth garments.
- Hand Pressing: The art of perfection for delicate and complex items, meticulously defining every seam and curve for unparalleled finish. This service is provided by a highly skilled operative.
- Ozone Cleaning: Effectively eliminates odours, mould spores, and provides sanitisation for garments without harsh chemicals, penetrating deep into fabric fibres.
Packing
When we leverage our experience and expertise in high-volume logistics across the fashion, retail, and e-commerce sectors, we know that packaging is a critical touchpoint for your brand. Our facilities and expert teams are equipped to handle a vast array of packaging requirements, transforming your products into retail-ready or direct-to-consumer masterpieces.
- Flat & Hanging Processing: Preparing garments to be either flat-packed or hung, ensuring they are retail-ready and immaculately presented. This service optimises garment presentation, maximises saleability, and streamlines the supply chain by ensuring every garment is flawless and ready for display, reducing in-store preparation.
- Co-packing, Re-packing & Re-work: Assembling multiple products into bundles or promotional kits (kitting) or adapting/repairing existing packaging to meet specific requirements or address issues. This enables the creation of multi-packs, promotional bundles, gift sets, or custom retail displays. Sometimes this is crucial for satisfying retailer-specific requirements, returns processing, and market updates.
- Box to Hang: Converting flat-packed garments into a hanging format, making them ready for immediate display on the retail floor. Our service ensures garments arrive flawless, steamed or pressed, and ready to hang, significantly reducing in-store labour and accelerating the process of getting new collections onto the shop floor.
- De-ratio and Re-ratio: This process involves adjusting the mix of sizes, colours, or styles within product shipments to match specific retail demands or store profiles. A strategically rebalanced inventory can maximise full-price sales, minimise markdowns, improve store performance, and enhance customer satisfaction by ensuring the ideal product mix is available where and when it’s needed.
- Unpack, Repack, and Outsort: Our solutions involve efficiently unloading incoming goods, re-packaging, and sorting them for specific destinations or further processing; through efficient container de-stuffing, bulk break-down, retailer-specific re-packaging, and precise segregation, we can streamline your inbound processes. Our service maximises value recovery and ensures products are perfectly presented for their next destination.
Labelling
From crucial pricing and barcode information to essential care instructions, security tags, and country-specific declarations, incorrect or missing labels can lead to stock rejections, compliance fines, customer dissatisfaction, and significant delays. At Advanced Supply Chain, our specialised Labelling Services provide the precision and expertise needed to ensure every product is perfectly labelled, ready for market and fully compliant.
- Label Printing: Producing and applying various labels (e.g., barcodes, care labels, price tags) to products for inventory, sales, and compliance. Our service offers seamless inventory and sales data, enhances brand experience, ensures compliance and traceability, reduces errors and delays, and provides cost efficiency through accurate, on-demand label generation and application.
- Individual Item Labelling: Applying unique labels to each individual product for precise tracking, identification, and inventory management. This offers and facilitates, real-time traceability, automated data exchange, high-volume capacity, rigorous quality control, and the flexibility to adapt to fluctuating demands.
- RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification): Applying Radio-Frequency Identification tags to products for accurate, real-time tracking, inventory management, and improved supply chain visibility. Implementing this can achieve near 100% inventory accuracy, accelerate inventory counts, enhance omnichannel fulfilment, improve loss prevention, and streamline receiving and dispatch processes.
Quality Control
When minor imperfections can lead to returns, negative reviews, and a damaged brand image, Advanced Supply Chain’s rigorous Quality Control (QC) services provide a critical layer of assurance that every item meets your exact specifications and brand standards before it leaves our care.
- Quality Control (QC) Inspections: Inspecting products to ensure they meet specified quality standards, identify defects, and verify compliance before distribution. Doing this protects your brand’s reputation by catching imperfections before they reach customers, minimising returns and complaints, ensuring retail readiness, and upholding compliance with industry standards.
- Metal Detection: Our service screens products to detect and remove any metallic contaminants, ensuring consumer safety and product integrity. This acts as a crucial final line of defence, protecting consumers, upholding brand integrity, ensuring retailer compliance, and providing post-production assurance.
- PAT Testing (Portable Appliance Testing): Conducting Portable Appliance Testing on electrical items helps ensure they are safe for use and meet legal compliance standards. Doing this ensures consumer safety, reduces risk of accidents, ensures market readiness, and is crucial for value recovery of returned electrical items.
Returns and Repairs
We understand that managing returns efficiently requires more than just receiving goods back. It demands thorough inspection, intelligent triage, and expert handling to determine the optimal path for every returned item. Our state-of-the-art facilities and experienced teams are equipped to handle high volumes of returns across various product categories, with expertise in clothing & footwear, consumer electronics, and general merchandise.
- Sewing: We perform minor repairs or alterations on garments to fix defects, making them fit for sale. Our service maximises value recovery by repairing damaged items into full-price inventory, contributes to sustainability, enhances brand reputation, and offers a cost-effective solution to enhance your returns management.
- Returns and Salvage: Managing the entire returns process, including inspection, refurbishment, repair, and determining the best disposition (resale, salvage, disposal). This transforms the returns process into a strategic asset by maximising value recovery, enhancing customer loyalty through smooth experiences, reducing waste, gaining actionable insights for product improvement, and streamlining operations. From inbound processing and grading, all the way to final inspections and dispatch, we offer returns solutions that keep your goods flowing in the circular economy for as long as possible.
Whether your clothing and footwear needs a finishing touch or a quick clean, cosmetics need to be re-packed or reworked, or consumer electronics need to be PAT tested before they can be sold, Advanced Supply Chain can implement a solution that can enhances your products and your supply chain.
By integrating value added services, ASC empowers businesses to optimise their operations, reduce costs, and deliver a superior product experience to their customers.
Partner with us to unlock the full potential of your supply chain!
