In this post I present a short case study so you can see the kind of work that we do and learn a little bit about our operation here, how long we've been here and the sorts of stuff we make.
There's a contact form at the bottom (or you can email here) if you want to drop us a message, its free and we reply within a day so do reach out to us with your enquiry.
Guangzhou, a city in South China has been our base of operations since time began for us. Back in 2009 we got settled here. This is a story of how we began making bags for one of the world's best known car manufacturers.
There are literally thousands upon thousands of factories making leather and nylon goods operating here. There is no end of choice and it can be hard knowing where to start sometimes.
Material procurement is probably the most important process when choosing your supplier. Poor material lends itself to poor quality product. You wouldn't build a house out of paper would you? Its the same for bag manufacturing. You want the proper stuff. The real deal. You want the stuff you see on the shelf when your browsing backpacks in the camping store.
Well, that's where we come in. With 12 years in this city, although I will be honest it feels like 120 sometimes, we know every nook and cranny there is here. We have established superb relationships with our fabric suppliers, and it is this relationship we pass downstream to our clients when they choose to manufacture with us. We've done the hard work, so you don't have to.
I'll be honest and admit something. We are not perfect. We do make mistakes sometimes. We operate in a very competitive space where everyone around us is involved in a race to the bottom for pricing, and sometimes that affects us indirectly.
That's not to say we are expensive, just we don't cut corners. This approach to business and ethos paid off in 2019 when we were approached by a company to make luggage for one of the worlds most premium car brands. A real badge of honour.
The client had some idea of what they wanted to do but needed some assistance with the actual bag design elements, and making it all work, look good and polished. We submitted a brief, it was accepted and we got to work. Designing bags and backpacks is not that straight forward. There can be a lot of back and forth, ironing out tweaks, problems, design flaws, sticky zippers, adjusting fabric denier, lining pockets properly. Sometimes it takes us 3 weeks, sometimes it takes us 3 months. But we love doing it, and for us its part of the journey. Of course we hope that you too can make that journey with us.
We started with a very rough generic sample using some off the shelf PU (imitation leather), Neoprene and a standard no.5 zipper. It looked good, but it was still a ways off.
The handle was bulky, intrusive and it well just looked a bit cheap, but we were definitely moving in the right direction. It was good enough to get the approval and we went back to our chinese bag factory to work on materials and refine the design. Eventually we ended up with this which I have to say myself is a superb looking piece of kit.
The leather we used was a premium leather finished and worked in the U.K before being imported here into China for use in our bag manufacturers workshop. Each piece of leather, zipper, logo was safely stored in a dry, air conditioned part of the warehouse where it sat until we began production.
Production was slow and heavy going, as every bag in the factory had to be handled with the upmost care and detail to ensure there were no nicks from needles, no scratches from being poorly handled or bent.
Credit where credit due, goes to our partner bag factory in china for their absolute professionalism as everyone worked with some of the highest levels of detail I have ever seen. We did during the sewing process encounter issues with the neoprene bending once it was stitched into the leather and side fabric 900D. But we were able to rectify this quite quickly by just switching out for a better, stronger neoprene. I think we lost about two weeks doing that.
So I guess in summary the point is this: China is China, I am sure you have heard horror stories about poor quality bag manufacturers here, producing inferior work and selling your brand short. But thats with every business. There are always a range of operators out there. Most are good, but there are always a few bad eggs.
If you are looking to create something next level and in need of a good bag factory in china make sure you drop us an email richard@idealabgz.com and we can give you a brief overview on how it all works or fill out the form below and we will follow up in time.
Thanks for reading and look forward to hearing from you.
Rick