Picking a Clothing Supplier: Gyms
By The Velocity Wear Team
Judge a gym clothing supplier on four things: the minimum they hold you to, the lead time they quote from artwork approval, whether the price they gave includes decoration and labelling, and what a physical sample costs. Ours are 50 pieces per design, 10 to 15 working days, decoration included in the per-piece figure, and £150 for a sample that comes off your bulk invoice.
What should a gym ask before placing a first order?
Start with the boring questions, because they are the ones that turn into problems later. Is the minimum counted per design or per order? Does a second colourway trigger a second minimum? Is the quoted price per piece at the smallest quantity or at a volume you have not agreed to? Does the lead time start when you pay or when artwork is approved? A supplier who answers all four in plain numbers is easier to work with than one who answers in adjectives.
Then ask about wash. Gym kit is not corporate polos worn twice a week: staff tops go through the machine constantly and member merch is bought by people who train in it. Ask which decoration method the supplier would put on a garment washed twice a week, and why. Embroidery and DTF behave very differently over a year. The full list of questions we would ask in your position is in questions worth asking a manufacturer.
How do you compare two quotes that look different?
Rewrite both onto the same line. Take the quantity you actually intend to buy, not the quantity each quote is priced at, and work out the landed cost per piece with decoration, labelling and delivery included. Quotes get cheap by leaving things out, so the gap between two numbers is usually a difference in scope rather than a difference in price.
Check what happens as the number grows, too. Our tiers run 50 to 99, 100 to 249, 250 to 499, 500 to 999 and 1,000 plus, with up to 35% off the 50-piece price at the top. A quote that never moves as quantity rises is telling you something about how it was built. The wholesale pricing page sets the structure out so you can hold another quote against it.
Which answers should make a gym walk away?
A refusal to quote a per-piece price until you have committed. A lead time given as a range with no start point. A sample offered at no charge, which usually means the cost has been buried somewhere less visible. And any supplier who cannot tell you what happens when the second run has to match the first on colour, because a gym that reorders staff kit every year will hit that question.
It is also fair to ask where the garments ship from and in which currency you will be invoiced. We deliver to the UK, USA and Europe and invoice in seven currencies, which matters if your gym group runs accounts in more than one.
How do you test a supplier without risking the whole run?
Order the sample. At £150, credited against the bulk order when you place it, a sample is the only way to see the garment weight, the fit on a real body and the decoration in the flesh before you commit a five-figure budget. Put it through your own laundry three or four times before you approve anything, because that is the test your kit will actually face.
If the fit is the open question rather than the print, the gyms and fitness range shows the cuts we hold, and a render will not settle it. That gap is covered in mockups versus physical samples.
