Sportswear: A Strategic Response to Swimwear Seasonality
For those working in swimwear production, summer doesn’t always mean more work. Quite the opposite: once the main production cycles for summer collections wrap up, the warmer months can bring a significant slowdown in factory floor activity.
This seasonality is a structural reality of the industry and poses a real challenge for specialized manufacturers: how do you make the most of production capacity during low-demand periods without losing the specialization your business is built on?
The answer has increasingly involved strategic diversification into complementary categories, such as sportswear and beachwear.
When swimwear slows down, sportswear picks up
The calendar of a swimwear manufacturer starts long before the consumer ever reaches the beach. Collection development, fabric sourcing, pattern-making, sampling and production are all planned and carried out months in advance, concentrated mostly between autumn and early spring.
Once that phase ends and pieces reach the point of sale, industrial activity naturally slows down.
At Luipex, specialized in swimwear since 1994, this slowdown is most noticeable between June and September, when the production of swimsuits and bikinis drops. This is precisely the window in which sportswear manufacturing plays a decisive role.
As Miguel Freitas, Luipex’s commercial director, explains, sportswear helps make up for the slower months. Diversification allows the company to complement its core activity and keep production capacity balanced across all twelve months of the year.
Sportswear and swimwear: increasingly close categories
Market evolution itself favors this convergence. The steady growth of concepts like activewear and athleisure has brought sportswear closer to everyday life, while swimwear itself has become increasingly tied to fashion, lifestyle, technical innovation and sustainability.
The boundaries between these categories are now far more fluid.
For a swimwear manufacturer, this means the expertise built up in swimwear construction can open the door to new products. Both categories share very similar technical requirements:
- High-performance raw materials: stretch, compression, breathability and quick-drying properties.
- Precise construction: ergonomic seams, wear resistance and a perfect fit to the body.
- A focus on sustainability: recycled raw materials used to create sustainable swimwear and eco-conscious activewear.
Diversifying, in this context, doesn’t mean giving up specialization. It means taking that technical mastery further.
A single partner for different categories
For fashion brands, this industrial evolution brings a direct operational advantage. Working with different suppliers for each segment means managing multiple development processes, communication channels and quality control standards.
Having a single partner capable of delivering swimwear, beachwear and sportswear simplifies supply chain management and ensures greater visual and quality consistency across product lines.
The manufacturer stops being a one-off service provider and becomes a strategic partner, equipped to support the brand’s growth throughout the year.
The Luipex example
With around 80 employees and 85% of production destined for export to international markets, Luipex formalized sportswear and beachwear as complementary categories over the past four years, in response to client demands and the growth of fitness trends.
Despite this expansion, the company’s identity remains intact: swimwear stays at the core of the business, accounting for around 90% of total production.
The company’s responsiveness has also relied on the continuous modernization of its manufacturing processes, with greater use of laser cutting and in-house sublimation. At the same time, environmental responsibility guides day-to-day operations: around 80% of raw materials used come from recycled sources, and the factory’s solar plant covers, on average, 90% of energy needs, reaching 100% during several peak periods.
Conclusion
Seasonality will remain part of the swimwear industry. It can’t be eliminated, but it can be strategically managed.
The industry’s trajectory shows that diversification can happen without compromising specialization. Sportswear doesn’t replace swimwear: it complements it intelligently. For manufacturers, it means the continuous profitability of installed capacity and teams. For brands, it means the security of working with a versatile partner, ready for different demands.
Ultimately, it comes down to turning technical experience into versatility. Continuing to master swimwear. Being ready to do more. And thinking today about what brands will need tomorrow.
