Offices: Trade Show Season Order Deadlines
By The Velocity Wear Team
Order trade show kit about six weeks before the stand goes up, targeting delivery a full week early. Production takes 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval and transit follows, so six weeks leaves room for an artwork round and an inspection once the boxes arrive. A show date cannot move, which is why the buffer sits at the end.
How far ahead of a stand should kit be ordered?
Six weeks from enquiry is the working number, eight if you want a sample. That covers quoting, artwork, the build and transit, with a week spare at the end. The garments that suit stand teams are on the corporate clothing page, and the wholesale page sets out how quantity affects the rate.
Exhibitions punish optimism. Stand build, travel and the freight of everything else you are shipping all compete for the same final week, so clothing needs to be the thing that is already done.
Why aim for a week before, not the day before?
Because a week is enough time to fix something and a day is not. The buffer exists so you can open the boxes, count them, try one on and confirm that the colour reads correctly under exhibition lighting, which is harsher and cooler than any office.
- Count against the packing list, by size, before anything is loaded for the venue.
- Have one person wear a piece for an hour, because a collar that irritates is a long three days on a stand.
- Check the logo scale from three metres away, which is the distance visitors actually see it from.
- Pack a small number of spares in the middle sizes for staff added to the rota late.
What does a stand team need beyond shirts?
Most teams need two layers, not one. A branded polo or shirt for the stand itself, and something warmer for setup and breakdown, when halls are cold and the work is physical. Those are two designs and therefore two lots of 50 pieces, which is worth knowing before the budget is set.
Consider what visitors take away as well. If giveaway garments are part of the plan, they are another design again, and the sizing logic is completely different from staff kit because you are guessing at a crowd. Our guide to branding options for offices covers how tags and packaging affect how a handed-out piece is received.
How do you plan for a season of shows rather than one?
Treat the season as one order. Companies exhibiting at four events across a spring are far better served by a single run covering all four than by four separate top-ups. One run means one dye lot, one admin cycle and a higher quantity, which matters because discounts rise with volume to a ceiling of 35%.
Build the quantity from the whole rota, not the first show. Count everyone who will staff any stand, add the people who will be drafted in at the last minute, and add replacements for pieces that will be lost or ruined over a season on the road. That total usually surprises people, which is the point of doing it once in advance.
Keep the design stable across the season too. A dated design, tied to one event, becomes unusable the moment the event passes, whereas a plain company mark carries through the year and into the following one. Our guide to gifting apparel that gets worn makes the same argument about anything you hand to a visitor.
Plan how the kit gets cleaned between shows. A stand team wearing the same two pieces across four events in six weeks needs enough in circulation to wash one while wearing the other, which usually means two garments per person rather than one. Build that into the quantity at the outset, because discovering it at the second show leaves no time to order anything.
