Direct Apparel Manufacturing in China for Miami Brands

If you are building a brand out of Wynwood, Brickell, or Bal Harbour, your sourcing problem is not abstract.

Miami's brand culture has shifted hard since the influencer migration of 2020 to 2022. The city now sits behind only LA and NYC for new D2C launches in swim, intimates, and athleisure. SKIMS has Miami marketing roots. Most of the new athleisure brands that go viral on Latin-American TikTok ship out of Doral warehouses. None of that infrastructure helps you if your product is mediocre or your unit economics are broken at the cut-and-sew level.

Why source through Ohzehn

JJ Chen is co-founder and Chief Operations Officer.

The Miami-to-China lane: timelines and ports

There is a myth that Miami brands ship through PortMiami or Port Everglades because the boats from China dock there. They mostly do not. The big trans-Pacific lanes terminate on the West Coast or, for the all-water route, at Savannah and Charleston. Here is what your real timeline looks like:

• Yantian (Shenzhen) to Long Beach: 18 to 24 days on the water
• Yantian to Savannah, all-water through the Panama Canal: 28 to 34 days
• Ningbo to Long Beach: 20 to 26 days
• Long Beach to Miami by rail and truck: 7 to 10 days, depending on whether you use intermodal or direct dray
• Savannah to Miami by truck: 2 to 3 days

For most Miami swim and intimates brands, the West Coast plus rail route is faster door-to-door than the all-water Savannah route, even with the cross-country leg. The exception is if you have a Florida-based 3PL with deep Savannah relationships, which a few brands in Doral and Medley do.

What we make

Miami's product mix is unmistakable, and our categories line up almost perfectly with the city's brand scene:

• Swimwear: triangle, bandeau, scoop, one-piece, men's trunks, kids. Bonded seams, mesh-back hardware. This is the category Miami is most known for.
• Activewear: leggings, bras, shorts, sets. Compression knits, four-way stretch.
• Intimates: bras, panties, shapewear, loungewear. Cup constructions, wireless and underwire, contour and unlined.
• Yoga: softer hand-feel knits, buttery seamless, low-impact bra constructions.
• Casual: tees, joggers, hoodies, basics. Tubular and side-seam options.

If you are launching a Miami swim brand, the bio-based line is the one to ask about.

Compliance, tariffs, and your landed cost

This is where Miami brands get burned most often. The PortMiami CBP office is a real and active enforcement node, especially for swim and intimates coming in from Asia. A few things to know:

• Section 301 tariffs apply to most apparel HTS classifications from China. The current rates depend on your code.
• CPSIA applies to anything sized for kids, including kids' swim.
• Textile labeling and fiber content disclosure under the FTC's Care Labeling Rule.
• FDA does not regulate adult swim, but if you are doing a UV-claim swim product, you walk into different territory.
• Florida sales tax nexus is your problem, not ours, but worth flagging because most Miami brands ship nationally from a Doral 3PL and trigger nexus on the first out-of-state sale.

Landed cost in Miami for a typical swim brand running 3,000 to 8,000 units per style looks like FOB cost plus 12 to 18% freight plus tariff (varies by HTS) plus 1 to 3% duty broker and last-mile.

Working with us from Miami: how it actually feels

Our mill holds OEKO-TEX Standard 100 (Class I) and completed Higg FEM verification for the 2025 cycle (Cascale, formerly SAC).

Categories of brands in Miami we're a fit for

We are not a fit for everyone. Here is who we genuinely serve well:

• Pre-launch founders who need a real factory and not a sample-room service
• D2C brands scaling out of trading-company relationships
• D2C brands running quarterly drops and needing reorder reliability
• Latin-American brand expansions routing inventory through Miami before splitting to Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil

The case for going direct

There is a defensible reason trading companies exist. They handle communication, sampling, and consolidation for brands that do not want to learn how China works. The cost of that service, baked into your per-piece price, runs 15 to 35%. For a brand under 1,000 units a style, that is sometimes worth it. For any brand above that volume, it is a tax on growth.

The trading-company model is built on opacity. The direct-factory model is built on you knowing what your fabric costs, what your trim costs, and what your CMT actually is.

Going direct does not mean you have to learn Mandarin or fly to Guangzhou every quarter.

For Miami brands building their next swim, intimates, or athleisure drop, the question is not whether to source from China. The question is whether you want to keep paying someone else's markup to do it.