When it comes to large-quantity-orders, it is a wise outsourcing elastic bands. In global market, you will find various elastic band manufacturers in developing countries such as China, Vietnam, Combodia, etc, but communicating with such factories is never easy. You will probably find a lot of articles/videos about elastic band manufacturing process, but you hardly find an artile like this one telling you about checklists/tips about “how to get elastic bands outsourced”.
Typically when you reach out for elastic bands manufacturers, emails will go back and forth but no decisions will be made. The results of these low-efficiency communications are:
You still have little knowledge about making elastic bands;
The factory sales representatives still don’t know what you are looking for.
[This post is written by Lightspot, a clothing trim factory in China. However, the pre-elastic-band-mfg checklist applies to all factories around the world]
To save time for both sides, this post is about “how to get elastic bands manufactured easily and efficiently?” This question contains 4 parts:
- Preparations before reaching out to a elastic band factory;
- Decide one factory and talk about business details;
- The factory producing elastic bands;
- Shipping and receive your elastic bands;
This post will only talk about the 1st part and the other 3 parts will be discussed in the future posts (You might find it now in our elastic bands mfg blog page).
Preparations before reaching out to a elastic band factory
This contains 4 parts:
Decide Elastic Band Design
Size Reference
Quantity for each design and size
Decide what yarn/material you want for your elastic bands
- Decide Elastic Band Design
If you are a start-up business, you probably think elastic band design is difficult, but it’s not when it comes to elastic bands manufacturing. Most factories accept whatever formats of design(jpg, png, psd, ai… etc), There are 3 ways you can make a elastic band design.
Real Design: create a pattern by yourself or a professional designer;
Copy Design: search Pinterest and find patterns of elastic bands to your taste, then send the pattern to the factory;
Pick a real elastic bands sample in your local market and send it to the factory;
For the design format, you can provide either *jpg, *.png, *.psd, *.ai… designs.
- Size Reference.
The elastic bands factory needs to make sure the size of your elastic bands, so as to:
Estimate the approximate weight of elastic bands, thus decide the yarn usage&cost;
Program the elastic bands knitting machine;
Since elastic band size reference varies from different countries, every elastic band factory accept your designed size. A custom elastic band size chart from our former customers is as shown below, you would probably want to go out find a proper elastic band size chart in your local market:
For jacquard elastic, the size range we normal produce is 1cm-6cm
For knitting elastic, the size range we normal produce is 0.3cm-10cm
For braided elastic, the size range we normal produce is 0.3cm-3.2cm
- Quantity for each design/size
To help better estimate our cost thus your manufacturing fee, elastic band factories need to know your ordering quantity. You know, for any manufacturing industry, the more you order, the lower the unit manufacturing price will be. Just tell the elastic band factory how much meters/yards you want for each size/design.
- Decide what yarn/material you want for your elastic bands
You probably want to refer to our another post regarding:
What are Elastic Band Materials
You may wonder what’s behind a elastic band. Well, yarns. There are a whole bunch of yarns used for producing colorful elastic bands, getting to know these yarns are relatively difficult, even for those in the elastic bands industry. However, this page will give you an easy & quick guide on differnet elastic band materials. Generally, […]
Here is a general idea:
Generally, classic elastic bands are made of
80% polyster + 20% spandex or 20% latex
80% Nylon + 20% spandex or 20% latex
Don’t worry if you don’t know much about elastic bands material, just tell the elastic factory the functionalities of your products and ask for their advice. Or ask elastic factory send you real samples for check. If you are not sure whether the elastic band factory is tricking or not, you can also email me or leave a comment below, thus we will give you our suggestions.
How to get elastic bands manufactured-[Preparations]-Conclusions
In this post we talked about the 4 steps of preparing to get your elastic bands manufactured:
Decide Elastic Band Design
Size Reference
Quantity for each design and size
Decide what material you want for your elastic bands
Okay, by now you have the essential information before reaching out to a elastic band manufacturer, and it should be easy and quick that you will receive a specific quotation regarding your elastic bands. We will talk about the next 3 steps of elastic bands outsourcing in the latter posts.
Congratulations! Now you can start reaching out and wish you good luck! We hope we (Lightspot, the elastic band factory) will have the chance to support you in elastic bands manufacturing.