It’s a new brand’s nightmare. Your samples looked perfect, but after three months in the market, you get customer complaints: the edge paint (also known as You Bian or 油边) on your bags is cracking, peeling, and falling off.
This is one of the most common and disastrous quality failures in handbag manufacturing. It immediately makes a premium product look cheap and leads to warranty returns that can kill a brand’s reputation.
This problem is almost always caused by a factory rushing production and cutting costs. At Laimi, we believe edge painting is an art form that requires patience. Here is our 5-step process to ensure a smooth, durable, and flexible edge that lasts.
1. The Right Material: Sourcing Flexible Paint
- The Risk: Using cheap, low-quality paint. These paints are often rigid and hard. When the flexible bag body (especially on a soft PU or leather) bends, the hard paint doesn’t bend with it. It cracks and shatters.
- Our Solution: We source high-quality, polyurethane-based imported edge paints. These formulas are designed for flexibility and adhesion. They cost more, but they are the essential foundation for a durable finish.
2. The Foundation: Meticulous Edge Preparation
- The Risk: Applying paint directly to a raw, fuzzy, or uneven leather edge. The paint has nothing to grip, and the final look will be lumpy.
- Our Solution: The edge is first trimmed and sanded perfectly flat. On some leathers, we apply a base-coat primer to seal the raw fibers. This creates a smooth, stable, and non-absorbent foundation for the paint to adhere to.
3. The Process: Multiple Thin Layers
- The Risk: Rushing the job by applying one or two thick “globs” of paint. This looks bulky, takes forever to cure, and is extremely prone to cracking.
- Our Solution: We apply 3 to 5 thin layers of paint. This is non-negotiable. Each thin layer dries quickly and cures properly, building up a strong, laminated edge rather than a single thick, brittle one.
4. The “Secret” Step: Sanding Between Layers
- The Risk: Simply painting one layer on top of the next. This creates an uneven, “lumpy” finish that looks unprofessional.
- Our Solution: This is the step most factories skip. After each layer of paint dries, our artisans manually sand the edge with fine-grit sandpaper. This polishes the edge, removes any imperfections, and creates the perfect surface for the next layer to adhere to. The result is a perfectly smooth, rounded, and highly durable finish.
5. The Finish: Temperature-Controlled Curing
- The Risk: Rushing the bags to packing. If the paint isn’t 100% cured (especially in a humid environment), it will remain soft, get dings, or peel off.
- Our Solution: We use temperature-controlled drying and curing racks. This ensures every layer is fully set and hardened before the bag moves to the final QC and packing.
Our Philosophy: Patience Creates Quality
Edge painting is a classic production “bottleneck.” It can’t be rushed. We protect our clients’ brands by embracing this process, not by cutting corners. The edge of a handbag is a key sign of its quality, and we make sure it sends the right message.
Are you tired of quality issues holding your brand back? Contact our team to see how we build bags that last.
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