Briefing a Supplier for Caps
By The Velocity Wear Team
A cap supplier needs six things to quote properly: the build, the quantity, the decoration method and how many positions it covers, the colourway, usable artwork, and the date you need stock in hand. Send all six and the first number you get back is the one you can budget against. Send three of them and you get a range and a list of questions.
What does a supplier need before it can quote?
Start with the build, because everything else hangs off it. Five panel, six panel, snapback, trucker or dad cap; structured or unstructured; flat or curved brim. If you genuinely do not know, describe the audience and the use instead, and say so, rather than leaving the field blank and hoping.
Then the quantity, as a real number. Fifty pieces per design is the minimum and the bands step up from there, so a brief that says several hundred cannot be priced accurately. If you are weighing two quantities, ask for both to be quoted; that is a normal request and it tells you what the next tier is worth. The builds available are listed on the wholesale caps page and the bands on the pricing page.
Which artwork files actually work?
Vector files are what a supplier wants: a logo built from paths rather than pixels, so it can be scaled to the cap front without softening and separated into thread or ink colours cleanly. A high-resolution raster file can work for print, but it is useless as a basis for embroidery digitising if the edges are fuzzy.
What does not work is a logo lifted from a website, a screenshot, or a file with the background baked into it. Send the original artwork rather than a version that has been through a presentation deck. Include the colours as Pantone references rather than screen values, for the reasons set out in colour matching bulk caps.
What should you say about quantity and dates?
State the date the caps have to be in your hands, not the date of the event. Those are different, and the gap between them is your own receiving, counting and distribution time. Production is 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, with transit behind it, so an in-hand date lets a supplier tell you immediately whether it is achievable.
Say whether the quantity is fixed or flexible. A buyer who can move from 90 pieces to 100 may land in a better band, and a supplier can only point that out if the brief admits the number is movable. Mention the destination too, because delivery into the UK, the USA and Europe carries different transit, and invoicing is available in seven currencies.
What does a vague brief actually cost you?
Days, mostly, and they come out of the wrong end of the schedule. Every missing detail is a question, every question is a round trip, and none of that time is recoverable once the in-hand date is fixed. A brief sent complete on Monday can be quoted the same week; the same brief sent in fragments takes a fortnight to become an order.
It also costs accuracy. A quote given against assumptions changes when the assumptions turn out to be wrong, which is how a budget moves after it has been approved. If you want a template for the questions to answer, how do I brief a clothing supplier properly covers the general case, and the stages that follow the brief are set out in your first bulk cap order.
