Buyer Test Plan & Laboratory Budget

How to read this sheet

The three flags decide everything. A test measuring a property of the fabric is flagged per material and runs once on each quality whatever colour it is dyed; one measuring a property of the dyeing is flagged per colourway; one depending on both is flagged on both and runs on every combination, which is why those lines dominate a bill and why they are the ones to negotiate down to a reduced matrix. A test flagged on nothing runs once per style, which is the assumption a naive budget makes about every line and the reason it is wrong by a multiple rather than a margin. Nothing here knows which flags a given test deserves - that depends on the protocol as issued and on what the buyer will accept - so the flags are yours to set and the reduced matrices a laboratory will agree to are yours to negotiate. Retests are the share of tests a first-pass rate says will fail, charged at whatever a repeat costs; they are an expectation across the range and not a prediction that any particular test fails, and a range with one difficult shade will not distribute them the way this average does. Turnaround is reported as the longest single test rather than a schedule: tests run in parallel at a laboratory, so the longest one is what the time and action calendar has to carry, and it is a date the price does not tell you about. Costs are laboratory charges only and exclude sample garments consumed, courier, and the internal time of preparing and submitting, all of which a real testing budget also carries.