Ordering Denim Jackets for Christmas
By The Velocity Wear Team
For stock in hand by mid-December, start the conversation in early October. Production runs 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, transit sits on top, and the two stages that actually slip are artwork sign-off and sampling. Counting backwards from a delivery date rather than forwards from today is what keeps a Christmas denim order on schedule.
When is the last safe date to place a Christmas order?
Take your in-hand date and walk back three blocks. First, delivery transit, which depends on whether stock is landing in the UK, the USA or Europe. Second, the 10 to 15 working day build, which is fifteen working days at worst and therefore three calendar weeks with weekends in it. Third, everything before the clock starts: quoting, artwork, and the approval email that actually begins production.
Add those up and a mid-December date wants an early October start. Leave yourself a buffer week on top, because December freight is the busiest of the year and a delay there is the one part nobody controls. The wholesale denim jackets page is the fastest way to open that first conversation.
What slips the schedule before production starts?
Artwork, almost every time. A logo supplied as a screenshot has to be redrawn. A back piece designed at the wrong proportions has to be re-scaled and re-approved. Two people with different opinions about the wash colour can absorb a week on their own. None of that is production time, and none of it counts towards the 10 to 15 working days, which only begin once the artwork is signed off.
The other quiet delay is the size split. Fifty pieces is the minimum per design and sizes mix freely inside it, but somebody has to decide what that split is. Collect sizes before you place the order rather than during it. There is a checklist for what to send in briefing a supplier for denim jackets.
Should you order a sample before committing?
For a Christmas run that will sit on a retail rail or be handed to staff at a party, yes. A sample is £150 and that fee is credited against the bulk order, so it costs nothing in the end if you go ahead. What it buys you is certainty about the wash shade, the fit on a real body and how the embroidery sits on the chest panel.
Build the sample round into your October start date rather than bolting it on afterwards. The samples page explains how the stage works and what comes back to you.
How many jackets should a December drop carry?
Fifty is the floor per design, and for a first Christmas run that is often exactly right: enough to cover a team or a small drop without leaving a pallet of unsold stock in January. If you already know the design sells, the tiers reward going bigger, with up to 35% off the fifty-piece price at the highest band. Washed denim in a neutral indigo dates the slowest, which matters if some stock carries over. Guidance on protecting it through the winter is in care and washing for denim jackets.
Decide early what happens to anything unsold. A jacket with no festive artwork on it simply carries into the spring, which is the strongest argument for keeping the seasonal element on packaging rather than on the garment. If the design is explicitly festive, treat the run as consumed by the season and size it accordingly rather than hoping to move the remainder in February. Stock that has to be stored for eleven months also needs somewhere dry to sit, folded rather than hung, which is easy to overlook while the order is being planned in October.
