Ordering Caps for Tour Season
By The Velocity Wear Team
Tour caps need to be finished, counted and in the right building before the first date. Production runs 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, with transit behind it, so a run started a fortnight before the opening night will not make it. Six to eight weeks out is the point where a tour merch order stops being stressful.
When does tour merch have to be finished?
Finished means in a box you have opened and counted, not confirmed as shipped. Work back from load-in on date one: your own receiving and counting, transit, the 10 to 15 working day build, then artwork approval. Add a buffer on top, because a tour schedule has no slack anywhere in it once it starts moving.
The specification decisions that hold everything up are colourway count and decoration position, so settle both before you enquire. Style, quantity and finish are all set on the wholesale caps page, and the build clock does not start until the artwork is signed off.
Why do caps work at a merch table?
Because nobody has to find their size. A cap sells in the thirty seconds between songs in a way a t-shirt cannot, since an adjustable snapback or strapback fits almost anyone who picks it up. That removes the single biggest cause of lost sales at a merch stand, which is the medium selling out on night two.
Caps also travel better than folded garments. They stack, they survive a van, and they do not need refolding after every date. The construction detail that matters on the road is the closure and the crown stiffening, since a soft unstructured cap crushes in a flight case while a structured six panel holds its shape.
Where should the boxes actually go?
Somewhere with a person and an address that will still exist in a month, which is rarely a venue. Venues take deliveries on show days only, and a carton that arrives on the wrong day goes back. Ship to a management office, a rehearsal space or a merch company, count it there, and split it into per-date quantities before anything moves.
Splitting in advance is what makes restocking on the road possible. If each night has its own labelled box, you know at a glance what is left. How the caps arrive and in what carton structure is covered in how bulk caps are packed, which is worth reading before you plan the split.
How deep should the run be?
Deeper than the minimum. Fifty pieces is the floor per design, which on a multi-date tour is one good night. The bands 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, and caps hold their value between tours in a way a dated t-shirt does not.
Keep the number of designs low and the depth high. Three cap designs means three approvals, three setups and three lots of fifty, and it splits demand across stock you then have to carry. One cap done properly outsells three done thinly. Check the first delivery carefully before it leaves for the road, using the inspection list in quality checks on bulk caps, and if you want to approve the build in advance a sample is £150 credited against the bulk order through the samples page.
