Hoodies for Schools: reordering
By The Velocity Wear Team
A school reorder is really a new order with most of the work already done. The garment, colour and crest carry over, the back name list changes completely, and the 50-piece minimum applies again to the new year group. Production remains 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, and the saving is in the weeks before that, not in the run itself.
What carries over between year groups?
The garment specification, the crest artwork, the ink and thread references, the placement measurements and the layout of the back panel. Those are the pieces that took the longest to agree the first time, and once they are recorded the second year is a matter of dropping in a new list of names and confirming the sizes.
What does not carry over is anyone's memory of the decisions. Schools lose this information through staff changes more than anything else, which is why the file should live with the school rather than with the teacher who ran it. Store it somewhere the next head of year will find it, alongside the details on our schools and leavers page.
Will this year's hoodies match last year's?
Not exactly, and for a school that usually does not matter because each year group wears its own. Fleece is dyed in lots, and two lots of the same navy will sit slightly apart if you put them next to each other. Embroidery repeats closely because thread references are fixed. Print repeats closely where the ink was specified by reference rather than matched by eye.
Where it does matter is a school that wants a consistent house or team hoodie across year groups rather than a leavers garment. In that case order the full quantity in one run and hold stock, because a single run is one dye lot. That is also the cheaper route, since the volume discount reaches up to 35% as quantity climbs through the bands.
Does the minimum apply again?
Yes, fifty pieces per design, each year. A year group of 118 clears it easily. A small sixth form of thirty does not, and the usual answer there is to combine with another group, open the order to staff, or run the two years together with a shared design rather than a year-specific one.
- Check whether last year's spares can count towards this year's need before ordering.
- Ask whether the back layout still fits, since a larger cohort means more names in the same panel.
- Confirm the fleece weight is still what you want, rather than assuming.
- Re-collect sizes from the new cohort instead of reusing the previous split.
When should the reorder be placed?
Earlier than the first time, counterintuitively. Because the design is settled, schools assume the whole project is quicker and leave it later, then discover that size collection and the name list still take the same number of weeks they always did. Approval is faster on a reorder; collection is not.
Set the same deadlines you set the first year and the reorder runs smoothly. The wholesale hoodies page confirms the current specification before you repeat it, and can I reorder the same design later covers what we hold on file and for how long.
