Samples Before Bulk: A Guide for Trades
By The Velocity Wear Team
The sample is £150 and it is credited against your bulk order, so on a job you intend to place it costs time rather than money. For trades clothing it answers the questions a photograph cannot: how heavy the fabric actually is, how the seams are finished, and whether the decoration sits flat after a wash at the temperature your crew uses.
What does the £150 sample cover?
A real garment, in the fabric and colour you have specified, carrying your decoration. It is made the way the bulk run would be made, which is the whole point: a mock-up on a different blank tells you very little about the garment you would receive. Samples are never free, and a supplier offering them for nothing is usually sending a stock item.
The credit applies against the bulk order rather than being refunded separately. If you proceed, the £150 comes off the invoice. If you do not, you keep a physical garment you can compare against whatever you buy instead. The garments we sample are listed on the construction and trades page.
What should a site manager check on the sample?
Handle it before you look at it. Weight in the hand, thickness at the hem, and how much the fabric recovers when you stretch a cuff are the things that predict how it survives a winter. Then check the decoration edge, the neck construction and whether the shoulder seam is taped.
- 1Wash it five times at your real laundry temperature, not a gentle cycle.
- 2Check the print or stitch edge for lifting after those cycles.
- 3Put it on someone who will wear it, over what they normally wear underneath.
- 4Look at the logo size against the chest in person, because it reads smaller than on screen.
Logo scale is the correction most often made at this stage, and it is much cheaper to make now than after fifty pieces exist. The same applies to placement: a chest logo that clears a harness strap on the sample will clear it in production.
Is a render enough, or do you need the garment?
A render settles layout and colour relationships and nothing else. It cannot show you fabric weight, drape, how a print feels against skin or how a stitched logo sits on a knit. For office giveaway kit that may be acceptable; for a garment worn on a site every day it is not. AI mockups versus physical samples sets out exactly where the line falls.
The honest test is what the decision costs if it is wrong. Fifty pieces of the wrong weight cannot be unmade, and the 50-piece minimum means there is no small trial run to fall back on. That asymmetry is why the sample is worth the fortnight.
How much time does sampling add?
Treat it as a separate cycle that runs before the 10-15 working day production window rather than inside it. On a first order, build the sample into the plan from the start instead of discovering you need one halfway through. The counting-back method is set out in lead times trades should plan for, and the full service list is on the wholesale overview.
Who in the firm should assess the sample?
Not the person who placed the order. The useful opinion belongs to whoever wears the garment all day, because they will notice the collar that rubs under a vest and the cuff that stretches out within a week. Hand it to two or three of the crew, ask them to wear it on a real job, and collect the feedback afterwards.
Whoever runs the laundry should see it too. A garment that looks excellent and cannot take the wash temperature your firm uses is a problem you want to discover on one piece rather than on fifty. Between those two groups you will have covered almost everything that determines whether the order was a good one, well before the money is committed.
