Restocking Branded Kit for Offices
By The Velocity Wear Team
A restock of office kit runs on the same 10 to 15 working day build as the original, but the preparation is far shorter because artwork and specifications are already on file. The one thing a repeat order cannot promise is an identical dye lot, so plan colour-critical items in a single run and treat restocks as topping up the pool.
What changes between a first run and a restock?
Almost everything upstream of production disappears. The logo is vectored, the print position is measured, the thread numbers are recorded and the garment specification is fixed. What remains is confirming quantities and sizes, which for an established office takes an afternoon. The corporate clothing page lists the pieces that come back most often, and the wholesale page explains how each repeat is quoted.
The minimum does not change. Fifty pieces per design applies to a restock exactly as it did to the original, so a restock is a proper order rather than a top-up of six shirts. That is the main reason offices should size the first run generously.
Will the colour match the batch from last year?
It will be close, not identical. Fabric is dyed in lots, and two lots of the same reference can sit a shade apart in daylight even when both are correct to specification. Hung side by side in a wardrobe nobody notices. Worn side by side at a company photograph, somebody does.
There are three ways to handle it, and picking one early saves an awkward conversation later.
- Buy the whole projected need in one run, which removes the question entirely and reaches a better discount tier.
- Issue restock pieces to new starters only, so the older batch stays together on the people who already have it.
- Refresh the whole office at once when the design changes anyway, treating it as a new generation rather than a top-up.
How often should an office restock?
Tie it to hiring rather than the calendar. An office adding two people a month exhausts a buffer of twenty in under a year; an office that hires twice a year can go two years on one run. Watch the pool rather than the date, and place the order when it drops to roughly three months of cover.
That threshold matters because a restock still needs three to four weeks end to end. Ordering when the cupboard is empty means a period where new staff have no kit, which is exactly the impression an onboarding pack exists to avoid. For more on repeatability across a whole clothing programme, our post on reordering the same design later covers what stays fixed and what does not.
What should you record before the first delivery arrives?
Write down the specification while it is in front of you, because in eighteen months nobody will remember it. Keep the garment reference, the colour name, the decoration method, the logo dimensions in millimetres, the print or stitch position, and the thread or ink references. Store it somewhere that survives the person who ordered it leaving.
Keep an issue log next to it, recording who received which size and when. Combined with the size guidance in our sizing guide for offices, that log is what turns the second order into a five-minute job. Add a note of any piece that came back for a swap, since that is your best evidence about how the garment fits your actual team.
Finally, keep one unworn piece from the original run as a physical reference. A stored garment answers colour and fit questions faster than any photograph, and it gives the factory something concrete to match against on the next build.
Name one person as the owner of the kit file. Offices lose specifications when whoever placed the original order changes role, and rebuilding a specification from a worn garment is slower than it sounds. A shared folder holding the specification, the artwork and the issue log survives staff turnover, which is the whole reason for writing any of it down in the first place.
