Just something I'd like to mention to all of you if you didn't know already!
Our products are made in the USA (With the exception of our $5 closeout Abyss Collection of men's swimsuits from 2016). The Abyss Collection was our first and last line of product(s) purchased overseas. I decided that I wanted Mertailor to be "American Made" and support my community.
Our product lines are made in our studio, right here in Crystal River, FL, not a factory in any other state or country.
We operate and manufacture in-house.
Many of our products have a 5-7 day production time as we normally make to order and not trying to "overstock" our product lines like other companies do when they order in quanities over seas. Our motto is QOQ, "Quality Over Quantity".
Our entire team of talented individuals are creating everything from start to finish. This includes the beginning design of the product lines, pattern making and the graduation of patterns, printing and transferring of all the various fabrics we use including spandex, neoprene, and minky fabrics, cutting and sewing of the garments, quality control, and packaging and fullfillment. However, that's just the half of it! Let's not forget the customer service and management side of things! It takes a TON of energy to make Mertailor operate on the daily basis.
While this may not mean much to some of you, this takes time, money, and a lot of energy. Not to mention, we truly care about all of our customers and the quality and service we can deliver to them.
Many of the the raw materials that we purchase to make our products are also manufactured in the United States, which also increases the bottom line of our products. However, there's much more control of quality this way.
When a company purchases from overseas factories, you can run into "fishy" situations such as improper sizing, coloring, wrong materials, unsafe materials, etc. And guess what the best part is? The company can be OUT THOUSANDS of HUNDREDS of dollars without any recourse to the factory that they purchased from.
It's unfortunate that overseas factories have abused their labor forces to make a "quick buck" and spoiled so many individuals all over the world due to cheap labor and cheap "knock-off" products.
Sure, we could manufacture our products overseas and shutdown our manufacturing facilities to transform them into large stock warehouses, but that is not how we roll.
In a nutshell, we aren't a factory in China paying $0.50-$1.00 per hour (Average Chinese factory workers make $285 per month) to our employees or making them work in unfair or unrealistic conditions. There's plenty of other companies that you can purchase from who support this clause, if that's what you're looking for. There's a few that come to mind right away.... If you're looking for a cheap product, you might as well look elsewhere, because we aren't serving that.
While we understand budgets and circumstantial situations, if you truly want something badly enough, you can save up for it. However, we live in a "got-to-have-it-now" world, which we are all guilty of.
We are thankful that we are able to purchase American made and employ hard-working individuals right here in the Sunshine State. We hope you can appreciate that as well.