CMA Bali’s Clothing Manufacturing Process
Our transparent and comprehensive clothing manufacturing process at CMA Bali provides you with the ability to take your productions and ideas further because we do everything for you. By hiring our production team to project manage everything for you, you never have to leave your home or office. You get to focus on creating and marketing your brand while we handle all the hard work on the ground and in the factories.
Whether you want to start your first ever clothing line, or you’re already an established brand, or perhaps you own a retail operation and need consistent stock, we can take care of everything for you.
Our Clothing Manufacturing Process
Step 1 – Find a Supplier
Finding a reliable supplier for your fabrics and materials is essential to achieving high quality garment production while reducing your production costs. However, local suppliers in most countries outside of Asia generally charge a premium price.
Another challenge often faced when trying to source fabrics from Asia on your own is the minimum order quantities can be quite high if you don’t already have established relationships and have a consistent history of meeting MOQs; import charges and duties can be prohibitive; and the timeframes for transport to your production destination can slow the entire production to a crawl.
Here at CMA Bali, we already have long-term established relationships with the best suppliers. Sourcing your materials is made quick and simple when we do it for you.
Step 2 – Find a Clothing Manufacturer
Finding a manufacturer can be more difficult than you think. There are hundreds of thousands of manufacturers to choose from, and many of them operate in countries where business ethics is as foreign as the language and culture.
You can scour the internet for directory websites like Alibaba, but the task of connecting with, trying to communicate with, building trust in, and finally narrowing your choice to one reliable ethical manufacturer is daunting at best. The likelihood of still being cheated is high.
Trying to work with local manufacturers outside Asia is expensive. Since they tend to be few and far between, the demand to produce through them creates unbelievably long lead times. Of course this is still assuming you find a great one to work with. It’s common to try a few manufacturers until you find the one that best fits your needs.
But at CMA Bali, we’ve taken all the guesswork and frustration out of this process for you.
Because our company has been working closely with the top ethical manufacturers in our region for many years, we already know exactly which manufacturer will be the best fit for you, and can immediately handle your exact production needs.
Of course we’ve already done the legwork to select the right manufacturers for our clients, and we continue to connect and test newcomers all the time.
Step 3 – Creating Your Patterns
In the CMA Bali clothing manufacturing process, we begin by receiving your detailed tech packs, then patterns are created from there. The reason why we choose to start from detailed tech packs is because, at first, manufacturers only need these in order to provide you with production costs. They can’t calculate production costs from patterns.
For sending in your tech packs, we have two options; please choose the one that feels best to you:
- You can visit this page on our website where you can download our tech packs, and also learn how to correctly fill them in.
- We have partnered with TechPacker. They have a fantastic online tool that lets you produce your own professional tech packs, and much more. Please visit www.TechPacker.com.
The more detail you provide, the less likely errors or delays will occur. Once the manufacturer creates your patterns, they will be used as your “blue print” for all your samples and future mass production pieces.
IMPORTANT: You can choose to ship clothing items to us if you can’t create tech packs. Please ask our Client Services team for more, click here.
Step 4 – Have Multiple Samples Made
We recommend producing at least two samples of each style of garment. This will allow you to keep one for reference, and for the manufacturer to keep a master for themselves. Manufacturers will charge you additional fees for each one but it’s totally worth it.
At CMA Bali, we can also help you by having the manufacturers produce a sample collection for you which can be used for photo shoots and marketing purposes. This is considered a small production but the benefits allow you to prepare for your sales and test the market. This will also allow you to have each piece graded for sizes.
IMPORTANT: We provide pattern / size grading for free!
Step 5 – Review Samples
Once you’ve produced multiple samples, you will be able to review them to ensure all the stitching is of strong quality, the fabric is correct for your garment, and that you are satisfied with the manufacturers work. If changes need to be made, this is the time to do it. This is your first time for quality control so make it count!
This stage is a back and forth communication process as much as it is a clothing manufacturing process. It can take some time to perfect the samples to get exactly what you want. If your samples don’t come out exactly how you want them to on the first time, we can make the necessary adjustments.
Don’t be discouraged during this initial process, we’re here to help make this transition to mass production easy. We’ve created a customised checklist to ensure high standards are kept for each piece while reviewing the samples for you.
Step 6 – Test the Market
At this step you should be ready to test your garments on your target market to see how they respond.
If you’re a fashion designer, you were probably going to produce your garments anyway and possibly already have traction in the marketplace with your own customer following. But if you are a non-designer or just getting started, then testing the market to ensure you are able to sell your garments is an important stage in your success.
Once you have tested the market, you can move onto mass production and making your big dreams a bigger reality.
Step 7 – Mass Production
An integral part of clothing production process is the manufacturer’s lead times and production timeframes.
A lead time is the time prior to your production getting started. And the production timeframe is the time it takes to produce all of your garments.
During the lead time, its essential to source all your fabrics and materials to ensure you’re ready to get things started as soon as its your turn to produce. Working with CMA Bali means you’ll never need to worry about this because we do the sourcing and coordination for you.
With our help, you can shorten lead and production times and get all the necessary pieces to your stores faster.
Step 8 – Shipping
Approximately 99% of all our clients run their businesses overseas from our manufacturing zones. This means their completed productions need to be shipped to them once everything is finished.
The good news is we’ve already researched all the major carriers from our manufacturing zones. WHen shipping to you, we can use our accounts or if you have accounts we can then use yours. In our industry, this method of shipping is called Ex-works whcih means we make all the arrangements but you pay the shipping company directly
And if your production volumes require sea freight, the minimum volume that most logistics agencies will accept is 3 cubic metres. Shipping times can be a few months. Sir freight is just days.
CMA Bali works with shipping partners that can handle any size of cargo to anywhere in the world. Once your production is complete, we can help arrange the best option for you.
That’s it. You’ve made it. Congratulations!
Our clothing manufacturing process is simple. We take you through all of these steps supporting you the whole way. To find out more about our packages and pricing, please Contact Us today.