Kinmart produces an average of 200,000 bags every month, offering wholesale and customized cosmetic and make-up bags to customers around the world. Webpackaging speaks to Martin Lieu, the company's founder, to find out how the soft bag manufacturing company has cemented its reputation for top quality bags to regularly work with some of the largest and most well known cosmetic companies internationally.

Martin, can you tell us on what does Kinmart's business focus?

Kinmart is a manufacturer of different kinds of soft bags, but not luggage bags. We manufacture cosmetic bags, tote bags, handbags and even some backpacks for schools. Most of our bags are cosmetic bags and make-up bags. This is our major product offering. We export directly to the worldwide market and have been doing so since the year 2000, offering both wholesale and customized bags.

Do you have a typical type of customer?

We've been working with some very well known cosmetic brands including L'Oréal, Shiseido, Avon and Lancôme - really large cosmetic companies that are known around the world. But it's not just large companies. We work with any company that likes our products and the quality is suitable for us to manufacture. We do have minimum requirements like 100s of pieces or 1000 pieces and those quantities tend to be easier for cosmetic companies.

You have 2 principal markets - custom and wholesale bags. How can you customize bags?

Customized means personalized or Private Label and sometimes Private Label is closely related to branding the bags. We can customize based on client requests with fabric, color, size and of course that includes including a custom logo too. We can include logos on bags in a variety of different ways - metal press, printing, embroidery... This is what we do for customers around the world every day.

From just a drawing or a physical sample that is sent to our office, we check the material and the size required and with that information we can duplicate the sample or samples. We then send them to the client for approval.

There is information about our custom bags on our web site at www.kinmart.com/custom.htm.

And your wholesale bags, how does that work?

After the production of an order of custom bags of many thousands of units, we have some really nice fabrics in the warehouse, so we use them to manufacture nice pieces without any branding and offer them as wholesale pieces. This stock is then available to cosmetic companies who cannot wait 1 month or even 14 days to manufacture, so then they can simply order from the Kinmart website choosing what they wish from the selection of available wholesale bags. Ordering is very easy.

The benefit of wholesale too is that there are very small minimum order quantities and customers can even choose different varieties of bags to make up an order and we can ship their order to them in 2-3 working days, or by courier which is another 5 to 7 days. So, it's really easy for the customer. It doesn't matter if they want a small quantity, or whether they need to products really quickly, the wholesale products are a great option for them to meet these needs. They just need to choose the product or products that they want!

All the information about Kinmart wholesale bags can be found at www.kinmart.com/wholesale.htm.

Are any Kinmart bags particularly popular with certain markets?

So far we've never seen that particular countries find one product more popular than another, but countries do have particular tastes that can be noted.

Cosmetic companies often choose cosmetic bags to match their cosmetic products. They might need a matching color or matching fabric, even a matching feeling. This is not a problem for us at Kinmart as our market is worldwide so we provide a service to make things as convenient as possible and a selection of products to suit clients' requirements.

Do large companies or brands have special requirements compared to other customers?

Well known brands are very strict on quality and they need product inspection before shipping. Quality is really important and price is very tight too.

The quality is easy for us to do in production and this is where we are lucky whereby we have so much experience we can easily match their requirements. We've been manufacturing for 16 years already!

What is the most complex bag customization that you have ever had to do?

There is nothing really that is complex for us. For a client, the easiest way is that they choose a product on our website and then they change the material and accessories, or the colour. That is very easy for customers and easy to communicate to us. The only thing that is complicated is when they cannot provide any designs, pictures or anything, so it is difficult for them to communicate exactly what they want.

We prefer that the client can provide physical samples or at least a product image so we can see the product type, colour, or with a sample know the feeling that they like, so that we can go forward working together and custom make a sample for their approval.

We get a lot of enquiries from customers that want to create a custom bag. Even though we provide several thousands of examples of bags on our website with different colours and styles for cosmetic bags, there are always people looking for something fresh and we pride ourselves in that we can create something new from a customer's design guidelines. There are so many different tastes so it is important to satisfy all of a customer's requirements. This is why we have a website where we can update the products using software that enables us to include new products and new options so quickly.

Kinmart has a fairly large product portfolio, yet you can provide bags with a short delivery time. How do you do it?

It is easy for us because we are so experienced in this industry. For wholesale bags we can organize delivery almost immediately. The product has already been produced so we just need to pack up the bags and then send them by courier.

For a custom bag, once we have received a sample or design, it takes about 1 week for us to prepare the sample for a brand new bag. For Private Label personalization you can see the different options available on our website. Different types of personalization for branding take different times - silk screen printing, embossing, or lasering onto a zipper pull, for example and we have a web page that clearly explains each option and how long each effect will take.

Customization is a broad concept. We think of private label as being focused on the logo, adding the logo to the product. It's not uncommon to have multiple logo's added to a product either - branded on the outside, inside and the zipper puller. We are clear on the set up costs and sample costs, and if a customer is prepared to wait that period of time for us to prepare the sample, then we can create exactly the bag they wish.

Quality control is very important to us in production and we have very strict in-house quality control in the workshop. We can process rush or urgent orders without issue and can change the way in which the product is sent to get it to them faster. We are flexible to accommodate a client's requirements to get the product that they want, when they want it.