"Aerobics was the novel exercise regime in the early 1980s, and my two sisters started Bodynits as a niche brand to capture the fitness wear market. Three years into manufacturing solely for our brand, we ventured into contract manufacturing for other sportswear brands.

When our original design manufacturing (ODM) business grew, we decided to restructure the brand marketing and distribution aspects under a sister company, Bodywork Concepts, while Bodynits International focused on ODM for its "bread and butter".

On the ODM business front, we saw a turnover of $600,000 in the first year, and it went up to $76 million in 2003, manufacturing 10 to 12 million pieces of garments annually from five Asian locations.

Among our first customers were Adidas, Puma and Nike. They still are, after 15 to 20 years. Our products were initially very technical and functional with the right colour, cut and fit. Things have changed and these days, apart from aesthetics and functionality, our products also need to be very trendy.

Many of our customers are leading brands with world markets. They are very specific in their requirements. We focus on product creation, development and production.

As an ODM, our understanding of lifestyle apparel and their appeal to their end consumers is paramount. Their functionality, product palette, fashion trends and the retail marketing have to be packaged together. As we are aware of trends, we also share our views with them as our customers are trendsetters and also excellent marketers. Likewise, they too share some proprietary information with us. We produce good quality and reliable products for them so that they have excellent products with which to compete in their markets.

As an ODM, we are a specialised manufacturer of fitness apparel with stretch and technical fabrics and this is a niche product market which we understand best." - Mr Bert Tan, executive director, Bodynits International