Production Update

Production Update

It’s been a while since our last production and many of you have been patiently waiting for your favorite styles to come back in stock. As you know I bought the company in the Fall of 2019 and have jumped in feet first. It’s already been a fabulous journey and learning experience and our first production is well underway. I just thought I’d share with you a few details about our production process to help you get a glimpse into the thoughtfulness, intent and time it takes to produce the clothing that you love.

It takes a while, but this is a good thing!

Here are a few things I have learned about why Inner Waves clothing is so fantastic and why we stand out in the crowded yoga wear world. The entire production process takes anywhere from 14-18 weeks for pre-production and production to complete. What follows is a simple version of how it works and why it takes time.

  • Our fabric is custom woven each time we produce our products. The fabric is woven just for us, it has not been sitting on a warehouse shelf waiting to be used. We decide what styles we are going to produce, what fabric we need and when we place our order the weaving begins. This process itself takes 6 weeks at a minimum. 
  • Each custom woven batch of fabric is then custom eco-dyed for Inner Waves. We have our staple colors and then seasonal colors, but even with the staple colors, we need to do a dip dye test on the fabric once it’s woven. This is important because we use organic cotton in our production. Each cotton plant is unique, so we never assume the colors will take the same each time. We dye a sample color for each batch and each color and compare it with our previous production runs. Next, we make adjustments to the color so we can keep color consistency over time for our customers. This process takes time too, with back and forth samples from the lab to our headquarters and often, several adjustments to the colors to get it just right.
  • Once the fabric is woven and the eco-dye process is finished the fabric goes to our grader/marker. The grading process is extremely important to keep consistency in our sizing. Again, each batch of organic cotton is slightly different and has a different shrinkage rate. That rate also changes once the cotton is dyed. We make adjustments to each production run depending on the shrinkage of the cotton that we are working with and how the colors we have used affect the shrinkage rate.
  • Next, we do a small production run and make a sample of every size of the styles that we are producing to make sure that the sizing is consistent with our previous productions. Once we are confident that the grading is perfect, then we can push the “Go Button” on production! 
  • After we push “Go”, it’s another 6- 8 weeks for production to complete. All our clothing is hand-made in Los Angeles at the same facility that has made the Inner Waves clothing since the beginning. I was thrilled while touring the facility, to see how happy and well cared for the employees are, most of whom have been employees for over 2 decades.
  • Final steps: the clothing is tagged, folded and shipped to the warehouse. Barcodes are assigned and presto, our clothes are ready to be shipped to you!

We could do it quicker. We could use standard fabrics that aren’t custom woven and dyed. We could cut corners in production to speed things up, but we don’t. That is what makes Inner Waves stand out in a crowd. We are dedicated to quality and consistency.  We go above and beyond to get you the products you love.

We thank you for your patience as we travel through this process. We know you’ve been waiting, and we appreciate your loyalty. I hope this sheds a little light on the process of how Inner Waves Organics goes from raw materials to the best organic yoga clothes on the planet. All good things take time and Inner Waves Organics is well worth the wait!


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