A Singaporean designer & European Sales staff from ODM just got back from Yu Chau street in Kowloon.  Here they visited the famous Chinese fabric street in Hong Kong in search for the most appropriate fabric for our Sarobag.  Maybe a bit of repetition but we really did not find good fabrics on our first selection in Shanghai.

Indeed, we felt that seeing a larger number of fabrics would give us more chances of picking the best one that would fulfill all our requirements. We expected surprises & changes in the way the bag was conceived at this stage of product development – we wanted to incorporate these improvements.   Bringing a designer to the markets opened his imagination leading to another round of design rendering.

The range of fabric merchandisers, all cramped along a few long streets, can be overwhelming so take your time.  We collected a wide range of material swatches to examine and compare back at the office.   Photo below gives selection from just 1 shop..

We had a rough idea of the kind of fabric and design we were looking for.   Our initial idea was to choose a viscose-type fabric:

  • a resistant fabric that could be used for holding beach items in a bag.
  • fast drying fabric
  • unisex design – worn by teenagers and young adult

The fabric that survived the reiterated process of elimination was not a viscose-type.   Through discussions with fabric market staff we decided Viscose was not resistant enough and we chose a light 70% polyester material – the type used to make beach pants.  We chose an elegant, magenta and white spring design that could please both men and women, and all age groups.

Below is a checklist, an information sheet on how to order fabric from Yu Chau Street. This is given with fabric sample swatches on the front so that you can easily order from the swatches you take away..

Now for the next stage…fabric is ordered from the material supplier and shipped directly to our bag factory in China for the assembling stage of the Sarobag.