Inside SanMar…

Renay Springsteen

Ensuring Your Customers’ Quality

With apparel, nothing is more important than quality.  You can have great prices, tons of inventory and stellar service, but without quality product none of that matters.

SanMar puts an enormous emphasis on the quality of its products, and ensuring and monitoring that high level of quality is a big job.  That job falls to Renay Springsteen and her team.

Q. Tell us a little about what you do, Renay.

A.  Well, quality control is responsible for maintaining SanMar’s high caliber of product.  We inspect every shipment, taking a large representative sample and checking for the right construction, size and color. 

Consistency is important, and our customers need to rely on the fact that our product will look and perform the same from one order to the next.  So quality control is rigorous with our inspections.  If we find an inconsistency, it’s our responsibility to work with our mills and product development to fix the problem.

Q. Do you ever interface with customers?

A. Absolutely.  Part of our job in quality control is education.  We work with our internal customer service teams as well as actual customers to answer quality questions and resolve problems. 

Q. How long have you been at SanMar?

A. I’ve been with the company for nine years in a variety of capacities.  Aside from quality control, I’ve worked in sales and service and was also in charge of our Preston showroom.  These different jobs have helped me to understand our company and our industry with a broader scope.

Q. What are some of your interests beyond SanMar?

A. I’m a big fan of crossword puzzles…and I love to travel.  Traveling is in my blood.  When I was a kid, my family traveled quite a bit — England, Scandinavia and all over Western Europe. Not to mention I was born in Guam.

I was just recently married, and my husband Lynn and I honeymooned in Cabo.  It was amazing.

Congratulations, Renay!  And keep up the great work!