Swimwear Manufacturer

Yes, one hundred pieces per style, per colour. Swimwear is among the more technical things we make, and the sampling stage carries more weight than the quantity does. Recovery fabric, usually a nylon or polyester elastane blend, has to be matched to the pattern because different fabrics stretch differently and a pattern cut for one will not fit correctly in another. Linings, gripper elastic, adjustable hardware and chlorine resistance all get specified before cutting. Seams are typically flatlocked or bonded rather than overlocked, so they lie flat against skin when wet. Because all of that is agreed once and carried into every reorder, second runs are considerably quicker. Expect the first sample round to take longer than on a jersey garment.

It depends on the fabric you specify, and it is worth deciding deliberately rather than by default. Standard nylon-elastane degrades relatively quickly in chlorinated water — the elastane breaks down, the fabric goes slack and slightly transparent, and a suit worn regularly in a pool can lose its shape within a season. Polyester-elastane holds up considerably better, and polyester with PBT or a chlorine-resistant elastane better still; that is what competitive swimwear uses. The trade-off is hand feel, since nylon is softer. If your customer is a pool swimmer, specify chlorine-resistant and say so on the label — it is a genuine selling point. If the range is resort and beach, standard nylon is fine and feels nicer. Tell us the use case and we will spec it accordingly.

Nylon feels better; polyester lasts longer. Nylon has a softer hand and a slightly more luxurious drape, which is why premium swim often uses it, but it is more vulnerable to chlorine and UV, so a pool-worn nylon suit degrades faster. Polyester holds colour and structure far better against both, which makes it the standard for competitive and pool swimwear and increasingly for resort pieces expected to survive a season. Polyester also takes sublimation printing, which nylon does not do well — so if you want an all-over print, that decides it for you. Both are blended with elastane for stretch. Our usual recommendation: polyester for anything sold as performance or expected to see chlorine, nylon where hand feel is the selling point and the wear is mostly beach.

Front lining is standard on women's swim and effectively expected; full lining is a quality and price decision. The lining does three jobs: it stops the fabric going sheer when wet, it improves the feel against skin, and it adds a layer of structure that helps the garment hold shape. Men's swim shorts usually use a mesh liner instead, which serves a different purpose. Skipping lining entirely saves cost and is common at the budget end, but it is the single most visible corner-cut in swimwear — a customer notices the moment the suit gets wet. We use a knitted polyester or nylon elastane lining matched to the shell's stretch, because a lining that does not stretch the same amount as the outer fabric will pucker or restrict.

All-over patterns, repeats and placement prints, yes — the method depends on your fabric. On polyester we sublimate, which puts the design inside the fibre with no hand feel and lets a pattern run across seams without breaking. On cotton it is screen printing for a defined repeat, or a printed fabric sourced to your artwork if the pattern needs to cover the whole garment. The thing worth knowing early is that a true all-over pattern is a cut-and-sew job: the fabric is printed flat and the garment assembled afterwards, so the artwork has to be laid out against the pattern pieces before cutting. That is done once and reused. Send us the repeat as a vector file with the tile dimensions and we will tell you honestly how it will behave at garment scale.