Briefing a Supplier for Denim Jackets
By The Velocity Wear Team
A denim jacket brief needs seven things: the cut, the denim weight and wash, the decoration method, the artwork position and size, the quantity, the size split and where the order is delivering. Send all seven at once and the first quote is a real number. Send three of them and you get an estimate that will move.
What does a supplier need before quoting?
Each of those seven items removes an assumption. The cut and the weight set the garment. The wash sets the appearance and how much the cloth will move. The decoration method and its position set the tooling and the labour. The quantity sets the tier. The size split confirms the run is buildable. The delivery point sets the freight.
A brief missing the delivery point produces a piece price with no landed cost, which is the most common reason a quote later looks different from what a buyer remembers. We deliver to the UK, the USA and Europe and invoice in seven currencies, so naming the destination early costs you nothing and settles the number. The bands are on the pricing page.
How should artwork be supplied?
Vector where possible, or a high-resolution file with the fonts outlined. Include the colour references you want matched, and state the finished dimensions of the artwork rather than leaving the scale to be inferred from a file. A design supplied at the wrong proportions has to be redrawn and re-approved, and that is calendar time, not production time.
For position, give measurements from a fixed point on the garment: so far down from the yoke seam, so far across from centre. A written measurement is unambiguous in a way that a marked-up photograph is not. What each panel can physically take is set out in print placement on denim jackets.
What detail changes the price most?
Quantity, then decoration. Moving up a tier does more for your unit cost than any specification change, with bands at 50 to 99, 100 to 249, 250 to 499, 500 to 999 and 1,000 or more, reaching up to 35% off the fifty-piece price. Custom denim jackets begin at $38 a piece at the fifty-piece minimum, and the current figure is on the wholesale denim jackets page.
After that, decoration count and complexity. Two positions cost more than one. A dense embroidered back design costs more than a compact chest mark. Private label elements, from woven labels through to branded packaging, add their own line and their own artwork approval, so mention them in the brief rather than after the quote arrives.
What do you get back once the brief lands?
A quote against the specification you sent, with the relevant tier applied and delivery costed to your named destination. From there it is artwork, optional sampling at £150 credited against the bulk order, and then 10 to 15 working days of production from the moment approval is confirmed.
Keep one person as the point of contact and one written specification as the reference. Orders that drift do so because two people are emailing slightly different versions of the same request. The stages that follow are walked through in your first bulk denim jacket order, step by step.
Say what the jackets are for, not only what they are. A supplier who knows the run is staff kit for a hot kitchen, or a retail piece that has to justify a price tag, can flag a specification problem before it becomes fifty jackets. That context costs one sentence in the enquiry and it regularly changes the recommendation on weight, wash or decoration method. A brief that reads as a parts list gets priced exactly as written, including the parts that are wrong.
