A PEEK INSIDE THE PROCESS OF CREATING MAAJI COLLECTIONS
BEING MAAJI
Interview with Amalia & Manuela, Maaji Founding Sisters
From left to right: Amalia Sierra and Manuela Sierra. Maaji founders.
Inspiring, unique, and powerful. These are some of the attributes we can use to describe Amalia and Manuela, the sisters and business partners who created Maaji in 2003, and who are still working together to inspire and deliver Colombia’s Maajic to the world. We’ve asked them five questions about the company, their roles and Maaji’s sustainability journey. Let’s see their answers.
1. You founded Maaji almost 20 years ago. How has the industry changed in the past 20 years?
Answer: The swimwear industry has changed significantly. We have had huge changes in printing processes and in fabric technology. The industry's cycles are increasingly faster and more efficient. Today 80% of our garments are made with sustainable materials, which was unthinkable 20 years ago!
Over the years, we have realized that this market is huge and that we have the whole summer lifestyle to conquer. We want to be the biggest summer lifestyle brand in the world, and we will get there without a doubt! Our mission is to continually transform ourselves and grow over time.
Do you ever wonder how the Maaji team does the work of creating fun and inspiring new collections?
Read on to find out…
Hi! My name is Laura Martinez, Head of Design at Maaji. I would love for you to have a strong relationship with our products and that is why I am happy to share with you the story of how our Maaji collections are made.
What inspires Maaji Collections?
After conducting thorough research, our design team gets together to brainstorm inspiring ideas before picking the best ones. Everything inspires us: nature, books, art, and real-life experiences. We believe that inspiration is everywhere, so we always stay curious, so we don’t miss out on this beautiful life!
An important step of this process is to make sure our ideas form an inspiring and interesting story based on our cool and fresh brand attributes. We have a very experienced fashion designer who guides us and oversees the entire process.
How about the variety of prints,
silhouettes, designs, and colors?
The next stage gets even more interesting as we get to develop prints, silhouettes, and designs, and pick out the best colors for our collection.
We are very detailed while choosing colors, first by understanding what is moving the most in the market, as well as analyzing future trends. For the prints, we visit factories, find new providers, check the WGSN reports, and also glean inspiration from print providers around the world.
How do you source fabrics?
Once we have finalized the preliminary steps, we proceed to source all the fabrics needed for our collections. We normally get our fabrics locally, but also from all over the world. We believe in sustainability so most of the time we go for sustainable fabrics!
Interesting story, what happens next?
Once we have the fabrics and all accessories, it’s time to fabricate the collection! We sew the pieces and products in our manufacturing plants, putting into consideration an eye for detail and fits for all sizes. From our market research, we understood the need to have sizes for all body types, and now you can find pieces up to size 3XL. Our strategy analysis and statistics help us to decide the number of styles and pieces to make each time.
Final Step?
Finally, our products are ready! But just before you get to see them, we have to do some quality checks just to be sure we are giving you the very best.
Once confirmed, it is time to package them nicely and ship them to you just the way you love it – our snail mail is so fun.
As you have read in our story, making new Maaji designs is oh so Maajical! We seek to make unique styles at least three times a year and that’s how we keep renewing our brand. We hope this little peek behind the scenes makes you as excited as we get to check out each and every new Maaji collection.