Ordering Caps for the New Year Rush
By The Velocity Wear Team
Place a January cap order in November. Production takes 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, and December is the month where that count stops behaving: holidays remove working days from the middle of the schedule and carriers are at their busiest either side. Ordering in November means the build finishes before the calendar thins out.
What has to leave your desk in November?
Three things, in order. The specification, so the quote is real rather than indicative. The approved artwork, because the production clock starts there and nowhere else. And the purchase decision itself, because an order sitting unsigned while somebody is on leave is an order that has not started. Settle the specification on the wholesale caps page and the rest follows quickly.
If you want to see the cap first, November is also the last comfortable month for that. A sample is £150 and is credited against the bulk order, and the round trip has to sit in front of production rather than beside it. Ordering one through the samples page in late December leaves the bulk run stranded in January.
Does December really eat the calendar?
More than most buyers plan for. Working days are what the 10 to 15 day window counts, and December has fewer of them than any other month once holidays are removed. Freight is the bigger problem: the same carriers that handle your caps are handling everybody else, so transit times that hold all year stretch in the last fortnight of December.
The compounding effect is what catches people out. A schedule with no slack in October is merely tight. The same schedule in December is broken, because every stage inherits the delay from the one before it. The general shape of these windows is set out in apparel production lead times explained.
What actually gets ordered for a January intake?
For gyms and clubs, the January cap is a joining piece: something a new member gets or buys in their first week. Adjustable snapbacks and strapbacks suit that, because nobody has to be measured. For brands it is usually a restock rather than a new design, which is the easiest kind of order to place quickly since the artwork is already digitised and approved.
Keep the design free of the year. A cap with a date on it has a shelf life of weeks; the same cap with only your mark on it sells through spring. Colour is where the seasonal signal belongs, and getting a specific shade right is its own conversation, covered in colour matching bulk caps.
Can you reuse last season artwork?
Usually yes, and it is the single biggest time saving available. A design that has been stitched before has a digitised file, a known thread palette and a known result on the crown, so approval becomes a confirmation rather than a review. Re-running it in a new crown colour is a smaller change than it sounds, though it still needs signing off.
Quantity is worth revisiting at the same time. Caps start from $12 a piece at the 50-piece minimum, and the tiers run 50 to 99, 100 to 249, 250 to 499, 500 to 999 and 1,000-plus, with up to 35% off the 50-piece price at the top band. If last year sold through, ordering into the next band up costs less per cap and removes the mid-season reorder that never quite arrives in time.
