The label is not decoration

How we work

Why we read it before we quote

Every textile product made available to a consumer has to carry an indication of its fibre composition. Not any wording, but the fibre names the regulation permits. Not loosely attached, but durably, legibly, visibly. And not in whichever language the mill prints, but in the official language of the territory where the product reaches the consumer. Pure and one hundred per cent are reserved for products made of a single fibre, and non-textile parts of animal origin have to be declared. None of that is industry etiquette.

What makes it a wholesaler's problem rather than a mill's is the way the duty transfers. A distributor who makes a product available under its own name or trademark, who affixes the label, or who alters what it says, is treated as the manufacturer for labelling purposes. That describes a great deal of ordinary wholesale trade, and it means the responsibility sits with the party closest to the Belgian buyer rather than the party furthest away. Since December 2024 a second question has to be answered as well: whether there is an economic operator established in the Union responsible for the product's compliance, because without one it may not be placed on this market, and a distributor is expected to verify markings and traceability before supplying rather than after a complaint.

Set against that, the thing buyers most often ask about is not required at all. Care and washing symbols are voluntary, and their absence is not a non-conformity. Thirty-six years of trading has produced a simple working order from all of this: read the label as a consumer would read it, check the names and the language, confirm who the operator in the Union is, keep the supplier declarations where they can be found, and state batch shade variation and dimensional tolerance at sample stage. Then talk about price, which is the easy part.