Handbag Factory Tour

On a recent factory tour in China I was invited to visit a friend’s designer handbag factory.  Since I was formerly bag designer, I was  especially excited to have a look inside to see what was going on. The purse factory we toured was making medium priced leather and fabric bags for export to the USA and Europe.

Purses and bags follow many of the same techniques found in shoemaking.  Material selection, cutting, processing and assembly processes are similar to footwear. One thing you will commonly see in a handbag factory is particular attention being paid to the edges of the material.  Every edge gets some type of finishing treatment.  A large portion of the factory was filled with racks of painted parts hanging to dry. You will not see this in a shoe factory.

This particular factory has a huge selection of available models. The store house has hundreds of different cutting dies and a massive collection of stock materials.