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"Everyone is talking about Bali these days. Is it a good place to manufacture and who are the best Bali swimwear manufacturers?"
Bali is a great place to manufacture swimwear. There are several excellent swimwear factories in Bali in fact. As a hotspot for fashion and beach culture, Bali attracts swimwear designers from around the world. Naturally, those designers often spend some time checking around the area for swimwear production options. The competition is a good thing. The variety and quantity of swimwear manufacturing in Bali means that materials and supplies are readily available, as well as a fairly wide selection of swimwear factories ready to take on the work. Best of all, it's Indonesia and there are lots of great reasons to manufacture in Indonesia.
Different Types of Bali Swimwear Manufacturers
If you're looking for a swimsuit manufacturer, you'll notice that most fall into 2 general types:
The Home Industry
First, you'll find the factories that can accept a very small MOQ (minimum order quantity). These factories are more like home workshops. Many of the bigger ones are more like a series of home workshops. Here in Indonesia, that's called "home industry". It might look as though you are dealing with a factory, but in actual fact, you are dealing with a sort of broker. This broker will take your order and send it out to many different local homes where your product will be sewn by a variety of different people in various conditions.
Fundamentally, there's nothing wrong with this approach, as long as your product can tolerate a fairly wide range of acceptable quality of fit and finish. Cleanliness can sometimes be an issue, as can odors, mildew and other irregularities.
This approach gives you the lowest possible cost, but it carries a high risk in terms of quality control issues, difficult communication and irregular scheduling. The people involved in this side of the industry are great people, but they're not typically what you would consider "business professionals". Expecting them to be something they're not is just unfair to them. It's very common that buyers will contract with these home industry manufacturers and expect them to deliver "industry standard" quality. That's a nice idea, but it's not realistic. It typically leads to stress and disappointment on both sides.
It is, however, a great option for handicraft products, which is exactly the traditional purpose of this manufacturing arrangement. We work with home industry as well, when the product required is suitable. So, while this type of swimwear manufacturer may work out in the short term, it is definitely not a viable long-term solution. Too much risk and not scalable.
The Garment Factory
Proper garment factories make up a much small number of the Bali swim factory options. There are several and some of them do good work. In general, you'll have a much higher quality product from a proper "clothing manufacturer" in Bali. However, there's a catch. Any good factory will expect you to be 100% ready for manufacturing. That means that you'll need finished prototypes, tech packs, final samples and you'll need to be prepared to place a large order.
Many small-to-midsize swimwear labels are just not ready for that size of order and their products are often not ready for manufacturing. That means either the factory won't take them as a client OR they'll take them but make a high volume of poor quality products. From the clients' perspectives, neither of those is a good outcome. In this scenario, Bali swimwear manufacturers bear little responsibility. From their perspective it's really not their problem if the product wasn't ready for the big leagues.
We found this out the hard way! Way back in the beginning when we launched our first swimwear label, we brought rough samples and no tech packs to Bali, searched for a factory, and placed an order for bulk swim. Can you guess how they turned out.... 6 months later when we received them? Yeah. REALLY bad.
Stuck in Fashion Purgatory
Clearly, there's a problem here for many growing businesses. With most Bali swim manufacturers, the soup is either too hot or too cold. It's difficult to grow a business with the unprofessional resources available on the low end. And you might not be ready yet for the requirements of working with a proper apparel factory. Right there in the middle is where many labels find themselves completely and hopelessly stuck. Fashion label purgatory. Not a fun place to be.
Why Prototype is the Best Swimwear Manufacturer in Bali
Prototype exists specifically to open this bottleneck. We support fashion labels from the earliest beginnings through to large volume production. At the beginning, we work with you to bring your product to a high level of finish with realistic plans for manufacturing. Once the prototypes are complete, then we make samples and tech packs for detailed costing and analysis. Best of all, we offer our clients the opportunity to manufacture low quantities with the same or better quality of a large factory.
Unlike many other Bali swimwear manufacturers, we don't send out your orders to home industry providers. Instead, we have strategic partnerships with factories in Bali and elsewhere in rapidly-developing Indonesia, where your designs are carefully manufactured under the watchful eye of our American owners and our skilled management team. We're dedicated to helping ensure the success of growing swimwear labels around the globe.
That's why our clients say Prototype Global is the best swimwear manufacturer in Bali! 😁
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