Caps for Agencies: cost
By The Velocity Wear Team
Caps start at $12 a piece at our fifty-piece minimum, and the per-piece falls as the quantity rises, by up to 35% against that fifty-piece price at the top tier. For an agency building a campaign budget, the useful number is not the unit cost but the landed cost per head: cap, decoration, delivery and the sample you will want before the client signs anything off.
What is the real per-piece for a campaign run?
Start at the from-price and move through the tiers: 50 to 99, 100 to 249, 250 to 499, 500 to 999 and 1,000 upwards. The step between tiers is where an agency finds its margin, because a client asking for 90 caps is usually one conversation away from 100. Current from-prices sit on the wholesale caps page, and the corporate and agency pages set out how we handle work placed on behalf of a client.
Decoration is part of the piece price, not a surprise line. Embroidery cost tracks stitch count, so a dense crest on a front panel is not priced like a three-letter monogram. If a client keeps redrawing the mark, price the version you are actually going to run.
Which costs do agencies forget to quote?
- 1The £150 sample. It is credited against the bulk order, so it is cash flow rather than cost, but it lands before the client has paid anything.
- 2Delivery, which depends on where the caps are going. We ship to the UK, the USA and Europe, and a campaign split across three markets is three consignments.
- 3The second design. Fifty pieces is per design, so a staff cap and a giveaway cap are two orders of fifty, not one of a hundred.
- 4Currency. We invoice in seven currencies; agree which one before the client signs, so the number in the proposal is the number on the invoice.
None of these are large on their own. Together they are the difference between a proposal that holds and one that needs a revision three weeks in.
How do you make the budget stretch further?
Quantity, almost always. If a client has a fixed pot, the highest-value move is to push the run into the next tier rather than to cheapen the cap. A thinner blank that nobody wears is worse value than a decent one that gets worn at three events.
After that, simplify the decoration rather than the garment. A clean one-colour embroidery on a good six-panel reads better than a busy multi-thread mark on a cheap one, and the stitch count is where the money goes — how embroidery stitch count affects cost shows the mechanism. If the client wants a particular silhouette on a budget, 5-panel versus 6-panel caps is the trade-off to put in front of them.
What should the client actually be shown?
One page, three numbers: per-piece at the quantity they asked for, per-piece at the next tier up, and the total landed cost including delivery. Agencies that show the tier above win bigger orders, because the client can see what another fifty caps buys them.
Keep the timeline on the same page. Production is 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, and a client who understands that at quoting stage does not ask for miracles in week three — caps for agencies: lead time has the full sequence.
