I`m in Asia too, Japan to be precise. Very competitive here especially due to the close proximity to China. Mind you getting stuff done in China is getting more and more unpopular here in Japan and the prices over there have been going up a lot anyway. If you need some good equipment send me a message and I`ll hook you up with M&R`s regional sales person who is a good friend of mine. I know a very good distributer for equipment and supplies in Thailand too. They do all the big brands and some less known once too. Ulano has their Asia HQ in Singapore by the way.
Of course I can speak only for myself but I could not run a business which is based only on outsourcing work, I enjoy screen printing far too much in order to do that. And who do you outsource too in your region? Most print shops in Asia are set up for min. orders of 1000s of pcs. I had a lot of guys from Singapore getting in touch with us as they could not find a place close by that would deliver good quality and take small qty orders. I would give it a go and do all the work yourself. Just make sure you have a website and facebook presence ready before you start your business.
are you sure pricing in china is getting higher? for us outsourcing work to the nearby regions has always been in the priority of malaysia ( due to locality and have the option of driving across the border), indonesia ( due to the cheap cheap pricing and comparatively high quality of work) and then all other south east asian regions such as vietnam, thailand etc. but like you mentioned these are for big orders and i will go thru them for work that more 20pcs per color. for a certain place in johor malaysia, i can even just drop the shirts that i want and get them to just print the shirts up.
i've never dealt with places like vietnam though i've heard those are the places to go to as they are really cheap. but for our startup, we're looking to get a few designs out on our own, and these will run in small numbers. i think why the quotes for min 1000 pieces are partly due to locality as it does not make sense to just ship 100 shirts and also sometimes due to you being Japan. if you know what i mean.
thank you for you encouragement again on getting it done ourselves. which i have always believed in right from the start. i know of ulana having a distributor based in SG. and again the issue with being out here in Asia is, the top heads do not really believe in local startups. they enjoy looking at the overseas distributor model. which i do not blame them as for just singapore contest itself, there isn't a demand for it. the demand is usually coming from the same few shops/companies. and they already have a business relationship with these few.
and those hook ups will definitely be helpful. expect that pm soon.
cheers mate!