Ordering Denim Jackets for Leavers Season
By The Velocity Wear Team
Leavers jackets should be ordered in spring, with delivery targeted for several weeks before the last day of term. Production is 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval plus transit, and the genuinely slow stage is collecting names and sizes from a year group. Start that collection before you request a quote, not after.
When does a leavers order need to be placed?
Aim to have jackets in school with at least three weeks of term remaining. That gives room to hand them out, swap a size that went wrong and take the photographs that everybody actually wants. Working back from that: transit, then up to three working weeks of build, then artwork approval, then the collection round. Spring is when the whole thing has to begin.
Leaving it until the summer term is the classic failure. The build window does not shorten because a school year is ending, and a jacket arriving in the final week is a jacket nobody gets to wear at school. The wholesale denim jackets page carries the specification to circulate to a parents' committee early.
How do you collect names and sizes without losing weeks?
Use one form, one deadline and one person chasing it. The fifty-piece minimum is per design and sizes mix freely within it, so the only information you truly need is how many of each size, plus any personalisation. Everything else is noise that delays the order.
If names are going on the jackets, fix the spelling at collection time and get it confirmed in writing by the student or the parent. A misspelled name on an embroidered jacket is not a production fault, and correcting it means a new garment. Nail the size curve too: a boxy cut tolerates a guess better than a fitted one, and the trade-offs are in fits and cuts for wholesale denim jackets if you are unsure.
What does a leavers jacket cost a school or a year group?
Custom denim jackets begin at $38 a piece at the fifty-piece minimum. Most year groups comfortably clear fifty, which puts them into the higher tiers: 50 to 99, 100 to 249, 250 to 499, 500 to 999 and 1,000 or more, with up to 35% off the fifty-piece price at the top band. A large school ordering together buys better than three forms ordering separately.
Budget the sample fee in as well. It is £150 and credited against the bulk order, so it comes back to you once the run is placed, and it settles the inevitable argument about whether the wash looks right in person. The samples page sets out what the stage involves.
Which decoration survives being worn every day after?
A leavers jacket gets worn long after the school year ends, which is the point of it. Embroidery and woven patches survive that best, because the artwork is built from thread rather than sitting on top of the cloth. A large printed back block looks sharp on day one but takes the most punishment from washing and from rubbing against a car seat or a bag strap.
If the design has to be printed, keep it away from the areas that crease hardest and specify a sensible care routine on the label. Practical guidance on laundering is in care and washing for denim jackets, and the whole ordering sequence is walked through in your first bulk denim jacket order, step by step.
Agree who holds the money before anything is ordered. A leavers order is usually funded by parents or by a year fund, and the person placing it is often a teacher or a volunteer rather than a purchasing department. Fix the per-jacket price, the deadline for payment and what happens if somebody withdraws, all in writing, before the order goes in. That single piece of admin prevents almost every dispute that surfaces later in the term.
