Underwear Supplier for Madrid Buyers: OEM Sourcing from China

Madrid is the buying centre for central Spain and the location of most national retail head offices, but it has no seaport — every container arrives at Valencia or Barcelona and finishes the journey inland. That single fact shapes the lead time, the cost and the way a Madrid buyer plans. Unitex Underwear (Xiamen Unitex Trade Co., Ltd.) is a China-based underwear supplier working through long-term BSCI-audited partner factories in the Fujian knitwear corridor — men’s, women’s and kids’ knitted underwear, MOQ 2,000 pcs per style and colour, FOB Xiamen.

The Madrid Buyer Base, and What It Asks For

Madrid concentrates national retail head offices, department-store buying teams, franchise and licensing operations, and the wholesale trade that supplies the independent retail sector across central and southern Spain. The brief that comes out of Madrid is usually a national one rather than a regional one: the same style has to sell in Madrid, Seville, Bilbao and the Canary Islands, and the label has to be right for all of them.

Two consequences follow. The first is that the label artwork depends on which legal entity is the importer, because Spanish rules require the importer’s fiscal identification number on the label. A group with a Spanish subsidiary and a Portuguese or Dutch distribution entity will need a different label variant for each, and discovering that after the labels are printed is expensive. The second is that Canary Islands shipments are not Spanish mainland shipments: the islands sit outside the Spanish VAT territory and have their own indirect tax regime, so a programme that includes Las Palmas or Santa Cruz needs a separate customs treatment from the start.

Madrid buyers also tend to be conscious of the Latin American overlap. Spanish-language labelling built for Spain travels well into Chile, Peru, Mexico and Colombia, where the same language requirement applies with different national additions. For a buyer with interests on both sides of the Atlantic, planning one label set to serve as much of it as possible is a real saving, and it is worth saying so at the brief stage rather than after the fact.

Xiamen to Madrid: Valencia by Sea, Then Rail or Road

Madrid has no port, and the two gateways that feed it are Valencia and Barcelona. Valencia is the larger container port and the closer of the two to Madrid — roughly 350 kilometres, about a day by road — while Barcelona is around 600 kilometres and one to two days. Sea transit from Xiamen into the Spanish Mediterranean ports runs in the region of twenty-five to thirty-five days port to port on a direct service, with transhipped routings adding several days and peak-season congestion at either port capable of adding more.

The inland leg is better than it used to be. Valencia–Madrid is served by a scheduled daily intermodal rail service, which gives a predictable window rather than a wait for a truck, and the rail corridors linking Valencia with Madrid and with the northern ports have been upgraded with additional freight slots and longer passing loops. In practice a Madrid buyer can plan on roughly forty to fifty days door to door by sea plus inland, and should still keep float for a slow clearance at the port, which is the step that varies most.

There is a third option that is genuinely useful for a fashion calendar. China–Europe rail runs from inland Chinese hubs into the European Union and serves Spain in the region of thirteen to eighteen days, at a cost above sea but well below air. For a range with a hard on-sale date and a modest volume, that middle option can be the one that keeps the delivery inside the window, and it is worth pricing alongside the sea route rather than assuming it is too expensive to consider.

Spanish Labelling, Duty and IVA

The Spanish regime is one of the more demanding in the European Union because it adds national requirements on top of the Union baseline. Fibre composition follows Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011 — the generic fibre names with percentages by weight in descending order, on a durable and legible label — and Article 16(3) of that Regulation allows member states to require their own official language, which Spain does. On top of that, Real Decreto 928/1987 requires the label information to appear at least in Spanish, requires the importer’s fiscal identification number to appear on labels for textiles imported and distributed in Spain, and requires a mark of origin. Labels must be permanently attached rather than supplied as a loose tag, which is a detail that shows up at retail inspection rather than at customs.

On cost: duty on knitted and woven apparel from China is in the region of twelve percent under the common external tariff, and Spanish IVA is twenty-one percent on the duty-paid value, recoverable by an IVA-registered importer. Note the territorial carve-out: the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla are outside the Spanish VAT territory and are treated under separate regimes, so a shipment to Las Palmas is a different customs exercise from one to Madrid and should be quoted separately rather than assumed to follow the mainland rules. Since December 2024, Regulation (EU) 2023/988 has required an EU-established responsible economic operator and a technical file, and REACH Annex XVII entry 43 restricts azo dyes that release listed aromatic amines in textiles worn against the skin — which includes everything in an underwear range.

What We Do, and What We Do Not Do

Unitex is a sourcing and supply-chain management company and owns no production facilities. We develop styles, source fabric and trims, place orders with long-term partner factories in the Xiamen–Quanzhou–Jinjiang corridor, and run production follow-up, AQL 2.5 inline and final inspection and export documentation. Compliance evidence is amfori BSCI at the partner sites and OEKO-TEX Standard 100 for the materials on your order, with certificate numbers shared at quotation so your team can verify them directly.

We state only what we can evidence — amfori BSCI social audits and OEKO-TEX Standard 100 at the partner sites; anything else a retail supplier code requires is confirmed per order. We describe ourselves as a sourcing and trading company rather than a factory — which matters commercially, because it means an order can move to whichever partner manufacturing base suits the fabric and the quantity rather than being limited to one mill’s machines. We are not your Spanish importer of record and do not hold an IVA number; the importer’s fiscal identification on the label has to be yours.

Sourcing Specifications at a Glance

Company	Xiamen Unitex Trade Co., Ltd. (厦门甲冠麒贸易有限公司) — sourcing and supply-chain management company, incorporated 2013; in the underwear trade since 2009
Business model	Sourcing and trading company — we neither own nor operate factories; every order runs on the long-term partner manufacturing lines in the Fujian knitwear corridor that best fit the fabric, quantity and delivery date
Location	Xiamen, Fujian Province, China — Jimei District, Xinglinwan Business Operation Center
Production base	Long-term partner factories across the Xiamen–Quanzhou–Jinjiang knitwear corridor; our own liaison office inside the Jinjiang factory district since 2013
Categories	Men’s / women’s / kids’ knitted underwear, plus size to 5XL, thermal and baselayers, pajamas and sleepwear, sport bras
MOQ	2,000 pcs per style and colour (trial orders from 1,000 pcs on selected styles)
Sampling	7–10 days for counter samples; 12–18 days for fully custom development
Bulk lead	45–60 days after pre-production sample approval
Compliance	BSCI-audited partner factories; OEKO-TEX® Standard 100 certified materials; certificate numbers for the production sites on your order shared at quotation
QC	AQL 2.5 inline and final inspection on every order; shrinkage and spirality tested before bulk cutting; third-party inspection (SGS, Intertek, TÜV) welcome
Port & terms	Xiamen Port — FOB Xiamen standard (EXW Xiamen for Russia/CIS); CIF, CNF or DDP on request
Payment	30% T/T deposit, 70% against copy of B/L; L/C at sight for larger programmes. On some programmes the balance — or the full value — is collected before shipment, where the payment route, the trade term (for example EXW) or an order value too small to carry a post-shipment balance puts the risk on the supplier rather than on the buyer’s market; the sequence that applies is stated on the quotation.

How to Start a Programme from Madrid

1. Send your design brief, spec sheet or reference sample — we review and respond within 48 hours
2. Receive fabric swatches, waistband options and a quotation within 3–5 business days
3. Approve counter samples (7–10 days) or full custom development samples (12–18 days)
4. Pre-production sample locks the measurement chart, then bulk runs 45–60 days with AQL 2.5 inline and final inspection
5. Shipment from Xiamen Port on your chosen term, with export documentation handled by our team

Contact us for a free quotation →

Prefer a third-party reference before you write? Our company profile and product showroom are public on Made-in-China.com, and our export shipping records are independently listed on Panjiva. Contact: [email protected] · WhatsApp +86 186 5081 3853.

Other Markets We Cover

This guide is one of a series written for buyers in different markets. The others cover the markets below — each page sets out what that market’s import rules, duty and shipping routes mean for an underwear programme sourced from China.

Europe — London · Paris · Barcelona · Rome · Milan · Frankfurt · Hamburg · Amsterdam · Warsaw · Stockholm · Athens · Moscow · St Petersburg · Italy · the Netherlands · the Nordics

The Americas — New York · Los Angeles · Miami · Toronto · Mexico City · Santiago de Chile · Lima · São Paulo · Buenos Aires · Mexico · Canada

Asia-Pacific, Türkiye, the Gulf and Africa — Tokyo · Seoul · Singapore · Sydney · Melbourne · Auckland · Dubai · Istanbul · Johannesburg · the UAE

If you are still weighing up whether to buy through a sourcing company at all, start with the China underwear supplier hub, which sets out how a sourcing company differs from a single factory and what that changes for your programme. Buyers already based in China — Shenzhen, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Hong Kong, Ningbo, Yiwu or Xiamen — are covered by a separate set of city guides linked from the hub.

Last updated: 2026-10-17 · Xiamen Unitex Trade Co., Ltd. — OEM & ODM underwear sourcing partner

Unitex Underwear (Xiamen Unitex Trade Co., Ltd.) — OEM/ODM underwear sourcing and supply-chain partner in Xiamen, China; in the trade since 2009, incorporated in 2013. Based in the Xiamen–Quanzhou–Jinjiang knitwear cluster, Fujian Province, south-east China.