Hoodies for Retailers: lead time
By The Velocity Wear Team
Production takes 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, with freight on top. A retailer should plan around the total cycle rather than that window alone, because the cost of getting it wrong is not a late delivery, it is a broken size run sitting on the shelf while customers walk. Set a reorder point, not a reorder date.
What should trigger a reorder?
A stock level, decided in advance. Work out how many pieces you sell in an average week, multiply by the number of weeks the full cycle takes, and add a buffer for the weeks that are better than average. That figure is your reorder point, and it should be set per size rather than for the garment as a whole, because the run breaks from the middle outwards. When medium and large drop below the line, the order goes in, regardless of how healthy the total looks. Apparel Production Lead Times Explained covers the production half of that cycle in more depth.
How long is the full cycle, not just production?
Count five stages. Deciding to reorder, which can take longer than anyone admits. Artwork approval, which is quick on a repeat and slow on anything new. Production, at 10 to 15 working days from the point of approval. Freight to your destination. And your own goods-in, which for a shop with limited back-of-house can add days. Retailers shipping into more distant or seasonally difficult destinations should pad the freight leg specifically; Getting Stock Into Canada is a worked example of how ports, distance and weather stretch that stage.
Does a repeat order run faster than a first one?
The production window does not change, but the approach to it does. On a repeat there is no artwork development, no sampling and no specification argument, so the time between deciding and starting collapses to almost nothing. That is the practical argument for building a range around a small number of repeatable designs rather than a constant churn of new ones. Each new design carries its own 50-piece minimum, its own approval and, if you are sensible, its own sample, and all three sit outside the 10 to 15 working days.
How should seasonal peaks be handled?
By ordering earlier rather than by expecting production to compress. Hoodies sell hardest in autumn and winter, which means the weeks when you most want a restock are the weeks everyone else does too. The two reliable moves are to place the seasonal order before the season rather than during it, and to hold a deeper buffer in the middle sizes through the peak so a single strong week does not break the run. Retailers stocking several categories can see what else is available in the same lead time on the wholesale range, and the hoodie specifications are on our hoodie wholesale page.
Keep a written record of dates as well as quantities. Note when each order was placed, when artwork was approved, when it shipped and when it actually reached the shelf. After three runs you will have your own cycle time rather than a general figure, and it will almost certainly be longer than you assumed, because the delays that recur are the ones nobody counts. That number, not the production window on its own, is what the reorder point should be built from.
Tell customers when something is coming back rather than hiding the gap. A product page marked as restocking, with a month against it and a notification field, keeps a sale alive that a bare out-of-stock message loses outright. It also gives you a demand signal ahead of delivery, which is more useful for sizing the next run than anything you can infer from past sales on their own.
