I approached Clothing Manufacturing Agent Bali to do some jumpsuits and skirts for me before I found this post by you. I’m pretty upset about this and wanted to add something.

I found out that although you may have been “dissatisfied”, you are also not truthful about your story. Reviews like yours always show a skewed perspective since we’re expected to believe that your personal feelings will be ours too. Well, I checked, and this is my findings.

First of all I asked them about their agency fees, why they charge this upfront. They explained its because they incur the costs of assigning a production manager to each client (how do you expect to pay their salaries??), research, sourcing, negotiations, travel, meetings, production management, and all communications up front. Plus they have a Samples only package which is not a 12-month contract and is only a fraction of their production package; so why wouldn’t you just take on samples first?

Their service is about providing something so that we can avoid having to do it ourselves. But is it fair that you only ask to pay them half when you ask them to provide 100% of their service upfront? How much do you think it would cost you to travel to Bali with flights, hotel, food, transport, and do all this work on your own?

You’re also not correct about their contract. I reviewed this when I went into my production. There is nothing in their contract that says I have no rights. It clearly stated that if something is not to my satisfaction, they must be allowed to continue working to fix whatever I found wrong. Anytime I asked for something that I wanted, they simply complied. Perhaps its in the way you treated them? I had no problems, and their team bent over backwards to assist me.

With swatches, the ones I received were 15cm x 15cm. Its more than enough to get a feel for the fabric’s stretch and texture. I also found out that the swatches are made by the suppliers, not CMAB!

I also asked about taxes. The taxes I was charged was on the production costs which has to be paid to the manufacturers, not to CMAB. Its clearly calculated on my invoice!

I don’t know what Natasha’s beef is. Sure you can be unhappy about a service but you’re out to cause harm. I continued making my clothes with CMAB until my production was over. I didnt have any problems. They invoiced me exactly what they said. The service and communication was great.

Maybe its also fair to check out this experience from another fellow designer named Abi who seems to have made a really good connection: http://www.clothingmanufacturingagentbali.com/2016/05/relationship-developed-clothing-agent-client/

I also have a friend who used Bali Garment. Sorry but they are not an agency! They say they are but they are in fact a small factory in Bali. When she went to them they never did any price checking with other manufacturers. How are they an agency and only push clients to one factory — their own!!!

PS: I did ask CMAB about Natasha after I read her post, and they were adamant about not sharing any info. But I finally cornered one of their office staff and I got a tidbit of what happened. Turns out that Natasha cancelled her work without allowing any opportunities to make things better, and she tried to cheat CMAB’s PayPal accounts by doing chargebacks for her shipping fees as well — the shipping fees were not paid to CMAB, rather to the shipping agency for something where there is no refund. She was basically trying to take money that wasn’t even owed to her. Now CMAB doesnt even let people pay via PayPal anymore because of this very incident. Thanks Natasha! :-(