What swim fabrics do you offer and how can I choose which ones I would like for my bikini collection?

We work with several fabric mills. Each fabric mill showcases its own fabric prints and colours throughout the year. They don’t necessarily have a fixed swatch of colors and prints to share with the market as is commonly thought. For that reason, we can’t ensure that a print or color shared with us today will necessarily be in stock or available for production unless we order it.

There are three ways to proceed when choosing fabrics and each one involves slightly different costs and lead times.

Prints we have in stock

You can go with our fabric prints. These would be the ones we stock and others which we use for our branded collection. There are dozens of different prints and colors. We have most solid colors (black, white, red, blue, etc..). Obviously choosing fabrics we have stock means lead times are shorter because we don’t have to source them. They also cost less because we don’t have to meet minimum quantities required by the fabric mills. We’ll share pictures of what we currently have.

Prints and colors you have in mind or have seen in the market

You can send us pictures of prints you like or have in mind and we’ll see if we can source something similar in terms of colors and patterns. For instance, you may be interested in something textured or shiny that’s in navy blue. We would then look to see if we can source this directly from the fabric mills or in the open market through third-party resellers. We’ll get back to you within a few days and share pictures of what we can source.

Exclusive Prints created by you or your designer

You can create your own exclusive print. Simply send us a high resolution digital image of the print in Vector format and we’ll test print a swatch at the fabric mill and send it to you for approval prior to producing an entire roll. A roll consisting of an exclusive fabric print weighs about 17 kgs and is enough to produce about 170 bikinis.

Noteworthy

When deciding which fabrics to choose, it’s important to lean towards eco-friendly options which we offer. It’s all moving in this direction. I wrote an extensive article about this but it’s definitely a selling point – and not everybody offers this option. We do.

Update: February 5th.

We work with some of the best fabric mills in Brazil and every one of them conveyed the same concerns. They, like thousands of other manufactures, are facing tremendous logistical challenges. Companies that depend on raw materials from overseas, haven’t been able to find empty freights to ship their materials. That’s because there’s a gap between demand (which is high) and supply (which is short) for goods in the market. How did this disequilibrium happen? Initially, the pandemic caused manufacturers to cut back or cancel their orders. They played it safe but didn’t foresee that demand for their products would pick up only a few months later. As such, producers scrambled to catch up with the unexpected demand, causing prices for empty containers to shoot up from $2,000 to $10,000. Unfortunately this isn’t good news for consumers. It means higher prices and longer lead times. Fabric mills, for example, source raw materials such as fiber filaments and colors dyes. As a result, they’re forced to scale back operations and offer limited choices to the market and our customers. Lead times have been extended not just because of shortages in raw materials but also because of labor constraints. Many employees have been told to work fewer hours or were completely laid off from work. As demand for raw materials continues to grow, we believe that our customers have no choice but to be patient and more flexible until the global supply chain improves.