Handmade in Wales: How We Make Our Weightlifting Belts

Every ModiFit weightlifting belt is made by us, by hand, in our workshop in Bridgend, Wales.

Not designed here and manufactured somewhere else. Not ordered from a factory with our logo added afterwards.

Actually made here.

The video below shows just one small stage of that process: skiving the suede lining of a custom weightlifting belt.

In the video, Ryan is working on the yellow suede lining of a custom weightlifting belt.

The embroidery on the padded back section has already been completed, and he’s now skiving the suede around the shape of the belt before it moves on to the next stage of manufacture.

It looks fairly simple.

It isn’t.

What is skiving?

Strictly speaking, what we call skiving is actually edge bevelling. But that doesn’t sound sexy. Skiving is the process of removing the excess material from the edge of the suede around the belt. It also chamfers the edge of the leather underneath, making it more comfortable to wear. This is particularly noticeable on powerlifting belts which are 4” wide all the way around.

Ryan works around the perimeter of the belt, carefully following its shape and removing the suede. It’s a relatively small part of making a belt, but it’s important.It’s one of those jobs most customers will never know happened. But they’ll notice the difference in the finished product.

Why do we still make our belts in Wales? We could have outsourced our manufacturing years ago. It probably would have been cheaper. It probably would have made us more money too.

But where’s the pride in that?

We’re proud to keep making our belts here in Wales and to play our small part in keeping British manufacturing going. We started making weightlifting belts because we wanted to make something properly. More than a decade later, we’re still cutting, embroidering, sewing, finishing and assembling them ourselves.

There’s something incredibly satisfying about starting with raw materials and eventually seeing a completely finished belt sitting on the bench. Especially when it’s a one-off custom design that didn’t exist anywhere in the world before somebody ordered it.

What goes into a ModiFit weightlifting belt?

A custom belt starts long before somebody sits down at a sewing machine. The design itself has to be created first.Customers send us all sorts of things: logos, photographs, characters, colours, text, tattoos, rough sketches or sometimes just an idea in their head.Our designer Dan then turns that into artwork for the belt.

For a custom order, we send the design to the customer for approval before we start making it. That means the design you create on the website isn’t simply sent straight into production. We redraw and prepare it properly first.

Then the physical manufacturing begins. Depending on the belt and the design, that can involve cutting the leather core, cutting the outer and inner materials, preparing embroidery, embroidering the panels, skiving materials, bonding the different layers together, sewing around the belt, finishing the edges, punching holes and fitting the buckle or hardware.

Finally, the completed belt is checked before being packed and sent out. A lot of work goes into something that ultimately just gets wrapped around your waist.

The materials matter too. Making the belts ourselves also means we get to control what goes into them. Our custom weightlifting belts use an Italian vegetable-tanned leather core, suede inner lining and choice of Italian upholstery leather, suede or a vinyl print - depending on the design.

The traditional Olympic weightlifting belt shape is approximately 4” / 10cm high across the padded back section before tapering down to around 2.5” / 6.4cm at the sides and front.

That taper is important. It gives you support around the back while leaving more room around the front and sides when you’re getting into positions such as a deep squat or receiving a clean.

The belt needs to feel substantial without simply being a huge slab of leather around your waist.

Custom means actually custom. One of the biggest advantages of manufacturing our belts ourselves is that we aren’t restricted to a catalogue of factory designs. If somebody wants a black belt with a simple embroidered name, we can make it. If they want something completely ridiculous covering the entire belt, we can make that too.

We’ve produced belts inspired by films, anime, sports teams, businesses, families, tattoos, national heritage and ideas that would be almost impossible to explain without seeing the finished thing. That’s one of our favourite parts of making them. A customer can come to us with little more than an idea, and eventually that idea leaves our workshop as a physical weightlifting belt.

Made in Wales

There are certainly easier ways to run a weightlifting belt company. There are factories around the world capable of producing belts in enormous quantities at a lower manufacturing cost. That’s not what we want ModiFit to be.

We want to keep making things.

We want to keep improving how we make them.

And we want somebody buying one of our belts to know that there are actual people in our workshop in Wales cutting the materials, running the embroidery machines, skiving the suede, sewing the belt and fitting the hardware.

The video at the top of this page shows about twenty seconds of that process. There are plenty more stages you don’t see. But that’s exactly the point. A handmade product is the result of hundreds of small jobs being done properly.

Designed in Wales. Made in Wales. Built to be lifted in anywhere.