Can I Put Names on Team Kit? Yes, and Here Is How
By The Velocity Wear Team
Yes. Names and numbers go on with vinyl, also called HTV, cut individually and heat pressed onto each garment. Vinyl is the method because every single piece is different, and no screen-based process handles per-item variation economically. You send one list of names and numbers, we fix the font, height and position once, then each garment is pressed to that template.
Why Vinyl and Not Screen Printing or DTF
Screen printing carries a setup cost per colour, per design. A separate screen for every player's surname would cost more than the kit. DTF has no per-colour setup, so it is technically capable, but vinyl remains the established route for names and numbers because the materials are made for it: flexible, durable, designed for sportswear, and available in the specialist finishes clubs expect. Vinyl is cut from a sheet by a blade following a path, which means changing the word costs nothing but the time to load a new file. That is exactly the economics personalisation needs.
Set the Template Once, Then Never Argue About It Again
Personalisation goes wrong when it is decided garment by garment. Agree the whole template before a single piece is pressed: the typeface, the letter height, whether names are straight or arched, how far below the collar the name sits, the number height on the back, and whether there is a smaller number on the front or the shorts. Then a 24-character double-barrelled surname and a four-letter one both land in the same place and look like they belong to the same set. Long names will need condensing rather than shrinking, and it is better to decide that rule once than to improvise it on the day.
Spelling Is Not Our Job, and This Is the One That Costs Money
This is the single biggest cause of remakes on personalised kit, and it is worth being blunt about. We reproduce exactly what is on the approved list, character for character. Nobody at our end can know whether a surname is McDonald or Macdonald, whether the apostrophe in O'Brien belongs there, whether an accent should be on the e, or whether Smyth is a typo for Smith. Approve the list in writing, in the exact capitalisation you want, and get the players or parents to check their own entries. A personalised garment cannot be resold or reused, so an error is a full replacement rather than a swap.
Numbers and Legibility From the Touchline
Numbers exist to be read at distance, which pulls in the opposite direction to elegant type. Thin, stylised or heavily outlined numerals lose their shape from thirty metres away, especially in poor light or when the shirt is moving. Weight and contrast beat decoration. A single-colour number in a heavy face on a contrasting shirt reads instantly. Two-layer numbers with an outline look excellent in photographs and add a second pressing operation per shirt, which is a fair trade if the club wants it, but decide that at the template stage rather than halfway through.
Polyester Kit Changes the Pressing, Not the Method
Most sports kit is polyester, and polyester is heat-sensitive. Press it too hot and you can scorch the fabric or leave a permanent shine where the platen sat. Sublimated kit adds a second issue, because heat can lift the garment's own dye into a light-coloured vinyl, so a white name on a sublimated red shirt is a scenario that needs the right material. Low-temperature vinyls exist for exactly these situations. The practical point for you is simply to tell us what the garment is, especially if it is already sublimated, before the template is finalised.
Personalisation Costs Time as Well as Money
Every personalised garment is handled individually: cut the name, weed it, position it, press it, check it. That is real time per piece, and it is why a run of 30 identical shirts and a run of 30 named shirts are not the same job. The practical consequence is to gather everything into one order rather than drip-feeding names in over three weeks. Our minimum of 20 pieces per order applies here as it does elsewhere, with sizes mixed freely, so a squad order is straightforward as long as you place it as one order.
Youth Teams: Ask Before You Default to Surnames
This one gets overlooked. Plenty of youth clubs prefer first name only, initials with a surname, or squad numbers with no name at all, for safeguarding reasons, and some governing bodies have their own guidance on what appears on junior kit. It is much easier to establish this before the artwork is approved than to explain to a parent afterwards. Check with your club's governing body or league for their current requirements, and treat their answer as the template rule rather than something to decide by preference.
- A final name list in writing, exactly as it should be spelt and capitalised.
- The squad numbers, and whether any are duplicated or reserved.
- The garment style, colour and whether it is already sublimated.
- Your chosen font, letter height, and position below the collar.
- One approval from one person, after the players or parents have checked their own entries.
“"Nobody remembers who paid for the kit. Everybody remembers whose name was spelt wrong."”