Custom Shorts and Summer Teamwear: An Ordering Guide
By The Velocity Wear Team
Custom shorts are usually sublimated on polyester for sports use or printed and embroidered on cotton-rich fabric for casual and gym wear. Velocity Wear produces them from a 20-piece minimum with mixed sizes, with sublimation running around 15–20 working days from artwork approval and printed cotton nearer 10–15, plus 2–5 working days tracked UK delivery.
Sports Shorts and Casual Shorts Are Different Garments
The most common mistake is treating them as one product. Sports shorts need to be polyester or a technical blend — they have to wick moisture, dry quickly and move freely, and sublimation suits them because the design goes into the fabric rather than sitting on it as a layer that traps heat. Casual and gym shorts are usually cotton-rich, heavier, and printed or embroidered like any other cotton garment. Ordering polyester sports shorts as casual merch, or cotton shorts for actual sport, disappoints in both directions.
Placement
Shorts have limited usable decoration area and a lot of seams.
- The conventional placement is the lower front of one leg, usually the left, above the hem and clear of the side seam.
- Keep designs small. A logo scaled for a chest is far too large for a short leg and will distort in movement.
- Avoid crossing seams, hems and pockets — every decoration method struggles there.
- Waistband branding is possible on some styles and reads as a premium detail, though the area is small and suits simple marks only.
Sizing
Shorts sizing varies more between ranges than almost any other garment, and inseam length differs substantially between a sports cut and a casual one. If the shorts are part of a matching set, order them in the same run as the tops from a coordinated range so the colours actually match — ordering separately is the most common cause of a set that does not look like one. Mixed sizes are allowed within the 20-piece minimum.
“"Shorts are the piece everyone specifies last and notices first when they do not match the rest of the kit."”
Ordering and Timing
Bulk discounts reach up to around 40% as quantities rise, and ordering shorts alongside the tops they pair with lifts the combined quantity. Summer teamwear has fixed seasonal deadlines and sublimation sits at the longer end of production, so brief early — ordering summer kit in spring rather than at the first warm week is the difference between having it for the season and having it for the end of it.
Artwork
Supply vector artwork and confirm exact colours rather than describing them. Check the design at actual size, since shorts branding is small and detail that reads on screen frequently does not at 8cm on a leg. Preview placement in the free Design Studio, and model garment and quantity combinations in the free instant price calculator.