Picking a Clothing Supplier: Trades
By The Velocity Wear Team
Pick a trades clothing supplier on what they will commit to in writing: fabric weight, decoration method, the production window, and the minimum. Ours are 10-15 working days from artwork approval and fifty pieces per design. A supplier who will not state those plainly at quote stage will not be clearer once your money is in.
What do you ask before you accept a trades quote?
Five questions, all answerable in an email. What is the fabric and its weight. Which decoration method is on which position. What the production window is from approval. What the minimum is per design. And what happens on a repeat order in six months. If an answer is a brochure rather than a number, ask again.
Then ask something specific to your work. Whether a chest logo clears a harness, whether the fabric handles a hot wash, whether the outer layer fits over a mid layer. A supplier who has produced site clothing answers immediately; one who has not will treat it as an unusual request. Our trades and construction page sets out what we run.
How do you read two quotes that are not the same thing?
Normalise them before you compare. Put the fabric weights side by side, then the decoration method, then the quantity tier each was priced at. A quote at 250 pieces and a quote at 50 are separated by the discount curve, which runs as far as 35% off the 50-piece rate, and that gap alone can explain the whole difference.
Then check what is missing. Is the neck label included, is the packing arrangement specified, is transit priced or excluded. Quotes are made to look competitive by leaving things out, and the excluded items reappear on the invoice. The broader checklist is in questions worth asking a manufacturer.
Which warning signs should end the conversation?
A sample offered at no charge, for one. Producing a decorated garment in your specification has a real cost, and a supplier giving one away is sending a stock item that tells you nothing about what you would receive. Ours is £150 and credited against the bulk order, which is what a genuine sample costs to make.
- A turnaround promise that is much shorter than anyone else quotes.
- A price that moves sharply downward when you hesitate.
- No willingness to name the fabric weight or the decoration method.
- A minimum that keeps changing depending on what you say you need.
The pattern behind all four is a supplier selling on price rather than on a specification. Trades kit is bought on how it looks after a winter, and that is decided by the spec nobody wanted to discuss.
What does a good supplier ask you?
A supplier worth using will ask what the garments are worn over, whether a vest goes on top, how the kit is washed and how many people need it. Those questions shape the recommendation, and their absence is a signal. Branding hi-vis, fleeces and polos for trades covers the specification conversation, and the full service list is on the wholesale overview.
How long should the selection process take?
A fortnight to gather and normalise quotes, then a sample cycle before anything is committed. Firms that compress this into a week end up choosing on price because price is the only field they managed to fill in for every supplier. Firms that stretch it over three months lose the site start date they were buying for in the first place.
Treat the first order as the evaluation rather than the commitment. You learn more from one completed run, including how the proofing went and whether the packing arrived as agreed, than from any amount of comparison beforehand. Keep the second order open until the first has arrived and been worn, and judge on that rather than on what was promised.
