Swimwear Development Studio is a family run business that provides professional pattern room services to both large manufacturers and small scale designers of women's swimwear. A large number of our clients came to us as a start up and our ability to make the entire process smoother, has kept a number of them around for years. On an regular basis one can find the entire family working in different aspects of the business.
Monique has been involved in the swimwear industry her entire life. During high school she started working as a salesperson at a local bikini store in Hermosa Beach, where she eventually worked her way up to shop manager. In 1990, she left Beach Bee to start a career as a swimwear pattern maker, and for the next 20 years worked for some of the largest swimwear companies in Southern California. At one company, Monique worked her way up to design room manager, where she was in charge of all pattern makers and sewers. Then, in 2010, while working for Quiksilver, she was told that all of their development was being moved to China and she was being laid off. After the initial shock wore off, we marched right past that setback and started Swimwear Experts (our original name before re-branding to Swimwear Development Studio).
Over the last ten years, we’ve moved from developing swimwear at our dinner table and having samples sewn by our only sewer working from her garage, to a 1200 sq ft multi-use facility, and then in 2015 we doubled our size, moving to a to a 2,500 sq ft multi-use facility where we currently are staffed with 7 full time sewers.
While we initially started out working only on development (patterns, samples and grading), we've since taken on small production runs for those clients needing to fill their orders once their development is complete.