Budgeting a Bulk Denim Jacket Order
By The Velocity Wear Team
Budget a bulk denim jacket order as four numbers: the garment at $38 a piece upward from our fifty-piece minimum, decoration priced against your artwork, the £150 sample that is credited back when you proceed, and delivery. Fifty jackets is therefore a four-figure commitment before decoration. Build the budget in that order and nothing arrives as a surprise at invoice stage.
How much should you set aside for fifty jackets?
Start from the from-price on our wholesale denim jackets page and multiply it by fifty. That is the floor for the garments alone, in one design, one colourway, sizes mixed as you please. Denim sits at the upper end of what we make because there is more fabric in a jacket than in a hoodie and more construction in the panels, pockets and cuffs.
Then add decoration. Embroidery on a chest position is a modest addition per jacket; a large back piece or a set of applied patches costs more because there is more work in it. Get that quoted against your real artwork rather than an estimate, because stitch count is what drives the figure and a logo with fine detail carries more stitches than it looks like it should.
Where does the sample fee land in the budget?
Treat the £150 sample as cash out now and credit later. You pay it before the bulk run, it buys you a made jacket in your fabric with your decoration on it, and it comes off the bulk invoice when you place the order. If your approval process involves anyone who has not seen denim from us before, that fee buys the argument as well as the garment.
What it should not be is an afterthought that appears in month two of a tight cash plan. Put it in the first line of the budget, dated before production, and the rest of the schedule stays honest.
What does delivery add to the total?
Jackets are heavy relative to their price, so freight is a real line rather than a rounding error. Fifty denim jackets take up meaningful space and weight, and the figure depends on whether the shipment is heading to the UK, the USA or Europe. Ask for the delivered total in the currency you are invoiced in, and budget against that rather than against the ex-works number.
If the jackets are going to more than one address, say so at quote stage. Splitting a shipment afterwards costs more than planning it that way from the start, and the split can usually be built into the same job.
Can a bigger order lower the cost per jacket?
Yes, and the tiers are where it happens: 50–99, 100–249, 250–499, 500–999 and 1,000 upwards, with the discount climbing to 35% off the fifty-piece price at the top. The pricing page shows the structure. The question is never whether deeper is cheaper per unit but whether you can sell or issue the extra stock before it becomes a cost of its own.
For a brand, that is a sell-through judgement, and the way to answer it is to look at what your last run actually moved. For a team order, it is a headcount judgement plus spares. Either way, work out the cash total at each tier before you decide, and read the quote itself carefully — reading a wholesale quote for denim jackets covers what each line means.
Leave a contingency line at the bottom of the sheet and resist spending it during the specification stage. Something almost always shifts between quote and delivery: a size added late, a second delivery address, a decision to put a label in the neck after all. A budget with nothing held back turns each of those into a conversation with whoever signs the invoice, while a budget with a small reserve absorbs them quietly. If nothing moves, the reserve simply lowers the cost per jacket at the end, which is a far better position than explaining an overspend on a first denim run.
