Your First Bulk Denim Jacket Order, Step by Step
By The Velocity Wear Team
A first bulk denim order runs through six stages: enquiry, quote, artwork, optional sample, production and delivery. The minimum is fifty pieces per design with sizes mixed freely, jackets start at $38 a piece at that minimum, and production takes 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval with transit on top.
What happens between the enquiry and the quote?
You describe the jacket and we price it. The description that gets a usable quote covers the cut, the denim weight and wash, the decoration and where it goes, the quantity, the size split and where the order is landing. Anything missing gets estimated, and an estimated quote is the one that changes later.
Quantity is the lever that moves the number most. The tiers run 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 at the top band, and the bands are laid out on the pricing page alongside the wholesale denim jackets page.
When does artwork become a real production file?
When it is supplied in a usable format and approved in writing. Vector files are ideal. A high-resolution raster file with the fonts outlined works for most print applications. A logo pulled from a website is not artwork, and turning it into artwork is a redraw that takes time and has to be approved in its own right.
Embroidery needs a digitised file, which we produce from your artwork rather than something you supply. Screens are made from the approved separations. Patches are made from the approved design. All of that tooling is built once approval lands, which is why nothing can change afterwards without restarting the stage. Position and scale are covered in print placement on denim jackets.
Do you need a sample before the bulk run?
On a first order, it is usually the right call. A sample is £150 and that fee is credited against the bulk order, so once you proceed it costs nothing. What it buys is certainty about three things a screen cannot show you: how the denim weight feels, how the cut sits on a real body and how the decoration reads on indigo rather than on a white mockup.
Inspect it properly rather than glancing at it, because the sample is the standard the bulk run is measured against. Whatever you accept at this point is what arrives fifty times. Weight is the hardest attribute to judge remotely, which is explained in GSM explained for bulk denim jackets.
What does production and delivery look like?
Production runs 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval. Fabric is cut, panels are decorated or assembled depending on the method, the garments are constructed, labelled, finished, bagged and boxed. Then transit, which depends on whether the order is landing in the UK, the USA or Europe, and which is quoted separately from the piece price.
Invoicing is available in seven currencies, so a first order does not have to be settled in a currency your accounts do not hold. Inspect the delivery on arrival before distributing anything, and get the enquiry itself right first time using the checklist in briefing a supplier for denim jackets.
Payment and paperwork run alongside all of this rather than after it. Agree terms with the quote, not once production has finished, and make sure whoever raises the purchase order inside your organisation is working from the final specification rather than the first estimate. On a first order that is the most common internal delay: the factory is ready, the artwork is approved, and the order sits waiting on a finance process nobody started.
