How Hawaiian Shirts are Made
As you admire your new Hawaiian shirt, you might have an even greater appreciation of how your shirt came into existence. The apparel industry is very competitive with relentless pressures from overseas manufacturers. Even in Hawaii, the birthplace of the Hawaiian shirt, many stores sell more shirts from China and other countries than shirts made in Hawaii. But there are manufacturers that are able to thrive while making their shirts locally.
The whole process really begins with physical pattern from which the shirt fabric is cut. The pattern consists of precisely cut cardstock cutouts of the different pieces of the shirt such as the sleeves, collar, pocket, and the main body. Though shirts from different manufacturers may look pretty much the same, each manufacturer has slightly different dimensions and features such as the number of buttons, collar size, sleeve length, and overall shirt length.
What really separates one shirt from another, however, is the print design. Hawaiian shirt design artists usually start sketching out a design on paper before refining them on a computer. It takes more than just the ability to create a visually appealing design. The design must be able to repeat as seamlessly as possible so that the beginning and end of a design is not distinguishable. This is especially crucial for border design and engineered shirts.
Some small Hawaiian shirt manufacturers buy “open prints” from fabric companies. This allows them to buy only the quantity of fabric they need for a production run. The disadvantage is that open prints are available to anybody making exclusivity impossible. Large manufacturers pay for “confined prints” giving them exclusive rights to the design. This often requires the up-front purchase of a few thousand yards of fabric, making it more costly to offer many different designs. It is not uncommon for one manufacturer to copy another's designs with just enough difference to be legal. The successful shirt manufacturers invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in their own confined prints, sometimes much more, and are naturally very protective of their intellectual property.
After making any desired design changes, Hawaiian shirt designs are approved for production. Designs are sent to fabric factories that produce rolls of fabric. The finished fabric is then delivered to the manufacturers for shirt production. Dozens of layers of different prints are rolled out onto a long cutting table. The pattern pieces are laid out on top of a sheet of paper and traced. A technician called a “cutter” carefully cuts layers simultaneously with an extremely sharp electric knife. A slight mistake in this step could render the entire batch useless costing thousands of dollars so a skilled and accurate cutter is very important.
Once all the sections are cut, they are bundled together and delivered contracted sewing companies. After a few days or weeks, depending on the company and time of the year, the nearly completed Hawaiian shirts are returned to the manufacturer for final preparation. Some sewing companies will deliver finished and ironed shirts to the manufacturer, while others deliver semi-finished shirts without buttons. A special machine resembling a sewing machine is used to create the holes and apply the buttons to the shirt. Amazingly, the majority of shirts are ironed by hand, one by one.
Once these new Hawaiian shirts are completed they are stored in inventory at the manufacturers’ warehouses, sent to retail stores, or in our case, prepped in our facility and shipped out to our waiting customer around the world.
That’s how our Hawaiian shirts are made. Technology has changed the way shirts are designed, but much of the actual manufacturing process hasn’t changed over the past 70 years. Although the local manufacturers are facing relentless pricing pressure from foreign-made shirts, there is something special about a genuine Hawaiian shirt with the “Made in Hawaii” label. When you put on one of our Hawaiian shirts, you are wearing a real piece of Aloha. We hope our shirts bring you much enjoyment, wherever you are in the world!
The whole process really begins with physical pattern from which the shirt fabric is cut. The pattern consists of precisely cut cardstock cutouts of the different pieces of the shirt such as the sleeves, collar, pocket, and the main body. Though shirts from different manufacturers may look pretty much the same, each manufacturer has slightly different dimensions and features such as the number of buttons, collar size, sleeve length, and overall shirt length.
What really separates one shirt from another, however, is the print design. Hawaiian shirt design artists usually start sketching out a design on paper before refining them on a computer. It takes more than just the ability to create a visually appealing design. The design must be able to repeat as seamlessly as possible so that the beginning and end of a design is not distinguishable. This is especially crucial for border design and engineered shirts.
Some small Hawaiian shirt manufacturers buy “open prints” from fabric companies. This allows them to buy only the quantity of fabric they need for a production run. The disadvantage is that open prints are available to anybody making exclusivity impossible. Large manufacturers pay for “confined prints” giving them exclusive rights to the design. This often requires the up-front purchase of a few thousand yards of fabric, making it more costly to offer many different designs. It is not uncommon for one manufacturer to copy another's designs with just enough difference to be legal. The successful shirt manufacturers invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in their own confined prints, sometimes much more, and are naturally very protective of their intellectual property.
After making any desired design changes, Hawaiian shirt designs are approved for production. Designs are sent to fabric factories that produce rolls of fabric. The finished fabric is then delivered to the manufacturers for shirt production. Dozens of layers of different prints are rolled out onto a long cutting table. The pattern pieces are laid out on top of a sheet of paper and traced. A technician called a “cutter” carefully cuts layers simultaneously with an extremely sharp electric knife. A slight mistake in this step could render the entire batch useless costing thousands of dollars so a skilled and accurate cutter is very important.
Once all the sections are cut, they are bundled together and delivered contracted sewing companies. After a few days or weeks, depending on the company and time of the year, the nearly completed Hawaiian shirts are returned to the manufacturer for final preparation. Some sewing companies will deliver finished and ironed shirts to the manufacturer, while others deliver semi-finished shirts without buttons. A special machine resembling a sewing machine is used to create the holes and apply the buttons to the shirt. Amazingly, the majority of shirts are ironed by hand, one by one.
Once these new Hawaiian shirts are completed they are stored in inventory at the manufacturers’ warehouses, sent to retail stores, or in our case, prepped in our facility and shipped out to our waiting customer around the world.
That’s how our Hawaiian shirts are made. Technology has changed the way shirts are designed, but much of the actual manufacturing process hasn’t changed over the past 70 years. Although the local manufacturers are facing relentless pricing pressure from foreign-made shirts, there is something special about a genuine Hawaiian shirt with the “Made in Hawaii” label. When you put on one of our Hawaiian shirts, you are wearing a real piece of Aloha. We hope our shirts bring you much enjoyment, wherever you are in the world!
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