Ordering Hoodies for Tour Season
By The Velocity Wear Team
Tour hoodies need to be boxed and counted before the first date, which means ordering roughly six to eight weeks out. Production is 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, delivery follows, and the artwork usually is not finished when the routing is announced. Approve the design early and let the dates be the thing that changes.
When does tour merch need to be ordered?
Count back from load-in on the first date, not from the date itself. Subtract transit. Subtract the build at its upper figure of 15 working days rather than its lower one. Subtract however long it takes to get a design approved by everyone who thinks they have a say, which on a tour is the least predictable part of the schedule.
Deliver to a fixed address, never to a venue. Venues will not hold a pallet, and a consignment chasing a moving tour is a consignment you will not see again. Send it to a rehearsal space, a lock-up or whoever is loading the van, and count it in before anything leaves.
What size split sells at a merch table?
Merch table buying skews larger than a general retail curve. People buy hoodies to wear loose and over other clothes, and they buy under time pressure in poor light, so they choose up rather than risk small. Weight the curve towards large and extra large and keep the extremes thin.
Depth beats variety. One design in enough sizes outsells two designs split across the same total, and it keeps you inside one 50-piece minimum instead of two. If you want a second option, make it a colourway rather than a new graphic, so the artwork is already approved. The underlying curve logic is in size splits for a bulk hoodies order.
One design or several?
One, for a first tour. Every additional design is another 50-piece minimum, another artwork approval and another set of boxes to keep track of in a van. A hoodie, a tee and a single print design is a table that works.
Leave the dates off the garment. Printed routing makes a hoodie unsellable the week the tour ends, and it makes the whole run worthless if a date moves. Put the artwork on the back and keep it as something someone would wear the following winter. That is also what lets you sell the remainder online afterwards.
What happens to what you do not sell?
Assume you will come home with some, and plan for it to be an asset rather than a loss. Undated stock sells through a webstore over the following months, particularly in autumn. Dated stock sits in a lock-up.
If the opposite happens and you sell out mid-run, a repeat is another 10 to 15 working days from approval, so it will not rescue the current tour. Take names instead and run it as an online drop afterwards; artwork and separations are already on file, so the front end is short. Quote the run on the wholesale hoodies page, check what a repeat involves in reordering wholesale hoodies, and if you want a garment in hand for photography before the tour starts, the £150 sample credited against the bulk order is described on the samples page.
