When designing your garments, it is important to get familiar with the fabric you want to use for your design. Before approaching your manufacturer you should know, or at least have an idea, of the fabric type you want them to source. This information can be submitted in the Bill of Materials in your tech-pack and allows the manufacturer to find the fabric that matches your creative vision.
Fabric choice has a huge influence on your production cost. Instead of using premium fabric, you may decide to use cheaper alternatives to suit your budget. For example, satin is an alternative to silk that has a very similar look and feel but is around half the cost. It is impossible to calculate the production cost without knowing the fabric, which is why you need to submit your tech pack that includes all of this information to your manufacturer before receiving a quote.
Fabric at TIALS STUDIO
At TIALS Studio, we encourage sourcing from local suppliers since it is more cost-effective for you, and minimizes the carbon footprint. Does this mean that the fabric you choose is all made in Bali? Definitely not, since fabric mills are limited in the island, and are mostly for the locals and their traditional wear or sarongs. So where does it come from? Our trusted suppliers here have relationships with various fabric mills from all around the world and they import the best modern fabrics in each category that also goes with demand. Because they import in volume, they provide the best ‘landed’ prices but they don’t always have every option especially if you are looking for very specific fabric content. When you are designing activewear you might look at a pair of leggings you own and see that the fabric content is 80% nylon and 20% elastane – this is most likely a custom fabric that was ordered from the fabric mill. Although this custom order can be done, typically in Bali there are only a handful of performance nylon fabrics available for activewear and even less if you are wanting the sustainable options. Most specialty performance fabrics need to be imported from China which incurs shipping and import costs. Although fabrics from China seem cheaper to purchase than ready-material here, they have higher MOQs and once shipping gets added and the goods arrive into Indonesia, they will almost certainly be more expensive than locally sourced fabric.
So, what is available here in Bali?
Some fabrics are always available, all year round, (unless they are on back-order) such as cotton woven, cotton jerseys, silks, linen, rayon jersey, rayon woven, tencel, cupro, bamboo, satin and swim fabrics such as nylon lycra. This big family of ‘ready stock’ fabrics are what we call base fabrics, and their popularity means that suppliers will always reorder them because manufacturers like us have customers that want to produce in them. Ready Stock fabrics are what suppliers keep in their inventory and they could have as little as 100 meters to as much as 5000 meters, and this inventory changes every day. Typically these fabrics are in white or ‘Ready to Dye’ and don’t come in multiple colours.
Lace is also available in Bali, but is considered a specialty fabric, which means that the stock cannot be guaranteed. Because of this, we suggest against sampling in lace, unless the supplier has enough stock for your entire production and as a client, you can pre-pay the fabric to take it off the market. This is always the recommended route to ensure you have priority and that we stock the fabric inventory, but adds extra costs in your sampling budget.
New innovative and on-trend fabrics get introduced each season. However, if the supplier does not receive enough orders then fabrics may be discontinued. In this scenario, the client is left no choice but to discontinue their design or make it in a new fabric, which involves resampling and reaching a MOQ for the new fabric order. Both of these have major impacts on your sampling budget.
So what is the MOQ anyway? Well, the minimum order quantity of fabric for your order depends on the fabric mill and their requirements, but we typically see them starting at 3,000kg which is a lot for a small or start-up brand. Besides investing in these fabric costs, you would also have to invest 1-2 months for fabric lead time, since it takes time for the fabric mill to produce it then ship it for manufacturing.
For all of our clients, we always advise what materials are ready and which ones you can always order, so you don’t run into these issues in your sampling & production process. This way you can make an educated decision on what’s best for your brand. Of course, there are instances from time to time where the fabric was available but it was bought out by someone else, leaving no ‘ready stock’ at the supplier and the only way to obtain it is through making a bulk order at the fabric mill.
As a full package manufacturer, we handle all your fabric sourcing during sampling and relay all the important information about the fabric, but we don’t take responsibility for future fabric inventory as it’s out of our control. We strongly advise booking our fabric sourcing service if you would like to double-check what fabrics are available before committing to sampling your designs. Of course, we are not capable of working with every fabric and as manufacturers, we don’t produce with leather, wool, or fur. Most other fabrics are within our manufacturing capabilities, whether they are sourced at our local suppliers or overseas.
We also have access to sustainable fabric options and we offer these alternatives to their non-sustainable counterparts. Unfortunately, sustainable fabric options are still very limited in every category, and although we are part of the SEAQUAL network, we do not guarantee that access to SEAQUAL fabrics unless you meet their MOQ from the fabric mill.
If you are interested in viewing the available fabric options in Bali, please use this link to send a request for our fabric catalogues.
