How wetsuits are made

SHEICO: the company behind the brands

SHEICO Group, a Taiwanese company founded in 1968 (originally making rubber boots), manufactures roughly 65% of all wetsuits sold globally — about 6 million suits per year. They have 8 production sites across 4 countries in Southeast Asia. When you buy a wetsuit from O'Neill, Billabong, Patagonia, C-Skins, Xcel, or most other brands, there's a strong chance it was made in a SHEICO factory.

This doesn't mean every suit is the same. SHEICO offers brands extensive customisation — from panel patterns and seam types to lining choices, rubber grades, and features. A budget suit and a premium suit from the same factory can be dramatically different products. The brand designs it; SHEICO builds it.

A few brands run their own factories. Rip Curl has Onsmooth in Thailand (since 1989). O'Neill has their own production line. But even these brands still use SHEICO for some models, particularly their entry-level ranges.

The design process

Most brands have their own design and R&D teams. They develop panel layouts (technical drawings), choose materials, select features, and specify seam types. For premium brands, this involves genuine innovation — experimenting with new rubber compounds, lining technologies, and construction methods, often in collaboration with SHEICO's own labs.

For mid-range and entry-level lines, the design process is simpler: brands select from SHEICO's existing options and customise the colour, branding, and a few features. Marketing then does the heavy lifting.

From rubber to suit

Raw chloroprene (from Denka in Japan or Louisiana) arrives at the factory. It's polymerised, mixed with carbon black and blowing agents, and baked into sheets of rubber foam. Those sheets are sliced to different thicknesses — 2mm, 3mm, 4mm, 5mm, 6mm — and laminated on both sides with nylon or polyester lining for strength.

The lined rubber sheets are then cut into panels following the brand's technical drawings. Cutting is done to maximise how many panels you can get from each sheet — waste is expensive and environmentally costly. Leftover neoprene often goes into hoods, gloves, and boots.

Panels are hand-assembled. Workers glue edges, stitch them (overlock, flatlock, or blindstitched depending on the spec), apply taping and sealing where specified, install zippers, and add features like knee pads, key pockets, and cuffing. The entire assembly is done by hand — there's no machine that builds a wetsuit.

The sales cycle

Brands typically update their wetsuit lines each winter season, with spring/summer collections carrying those updates into thinner models. Twice a year, sales meetings are held where brands present new collections to distributors and agents. Distributors then sell to surf shops. Shops usually order for the following year in September or October.

Direct-to-consumer brands like SRFACE and needessentials skip the distributor and sell online, which is why they can offer comparable quality at lower prices. This model is growing, but traditional surf shops still play a crucial role in sizing, advice, and community.

Why it matters to you

Understanding the supply chain helps you make better buying decisions. A 200-euro suit and a 500-euro suit from the same factory might use different rubber, seams, and linings — or they might not. Features that brands market as revolutionary are sometimes standard SHEICO options that every brand has access to. The real differences are in fit, rubber grade, seam quality, and how well the brand's design team did their job.