Hoodies for Events: lead time
By The Velocity Wear Team
Allow six weeks between starting an event hoodie order and needing the boxes on site. Production is 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, transit sits on top, and the remaining time absorbs artwork, sampling and the approval round. An event date does not move, so the buffer is the plan rather than an optional extra.
Where does the time actually go?
Roughly: a week to settle the design and get usable artwork files, optional sample time if you want to see the garment, a few days for proofing and approval, then the 10 to 15 working days of production, then transit. Laid out that way it is obvious why a three-week run-up fails, even though production itself would have fitted.
The step people forget is that working days exclude weekends. Fifteen working days is three calendar weeks. Add a bank holiday and it is longer. Our events and festivals page covers what we need to start the clock, and the specifications on the wholesale hoodies page are worth settling before you commit to a delivery date.
How do you build the schedule backwards?
- 1Fix the date the stock must be on site, which is usually before the event, not on it.
- 2Subtract transit to the delivery address, including any customs step if it crosses a border.
- 3Subtract 15 working days of production, using the upper end of the range rather than the lower.
- 4Subtract a week for proofing and approval, and name the one person who signs.
- 5Subtract sample time if you are ordering one, because it comes before production starts.
That arithmetic usually lands about six weeks out, sometimes seven if a sample is involved. If the answer is a date that has already passed, the design needs simplifying rather than the timeline compressing. Apparel production lead times explained breaks the same sequence down in more detail.
Where should the stock be delivered?
Not to the venue, in most cases. Festival and event sites often have no receiving address until the build week, and a delivery that arrives while the site is still a field goes back to a depot. Ship to an office, a lock-up or an organiser's address where someone can count the boxes and check the print before load-in.
Checking on arrival matters more for events than anywhere else, because the day you discover a problem is the day you still have time to do something about it. Opening boxes for the first time in a merch tent removes every option you have.
What if the event date moves?
Once artwork is approved and production has started, the run continues. Hoodies without a year or a date printed on them survive a postponement without any loss, which is a genuine argument for keeping dates off event merch unless the date is the point. Crew kit in particular is more useful undated.
Where the date is printed and the event moves, the stock becomes a keepsake rather than merch. That is a decision to make at artwork stage, calmly, rather than a risk to discover afterwards.
