How Long Does Custom Clothing Take to Make?
By The Velocity Wear Team
Allow around 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval for screen printing and embroidery, and nearer 15 to 20 for sublimation or complex multi-position jobs. Delivery sits on top of that, typically 2 to 5 working days in the UK after dispatch. The critical detail: production starts at artwork approval, not at order placement.
Where the Clock Actually Starts
This is the single most misunderstood thing about custom apparel timelines. You place an order on a Monday, artwork goes back and forth for a week, you approve on the following Tuesday, and the lead time you were quoted starts on that Tuesday. Not the Monday before it.
It is not a technicality. Nothing physical can happen until the artwork is signed off, because every step after that point is destructive. Screens get exposed. Thread gets loaded. Garments get pulled from stock and committed to your job. Reversing any of that after the fact means starting again.
What Happens During Those Days
The days are not padding. Artwork gets separated or digitised. Garments are picked and checked against the order. Screens are exposed and registered, or the embroidery file is test-stitched on the same fabric to check density and pull. Then the run itself, then curing or pressing, then folding, checking and packing.
Embroidery has a step people never anticipate: digitising is a manual craft, not a file conversion. Someone decides stitch direction, underlay and pull compensation for your specific logo on your specific fabric. A logo that digitises cleanly on a polo may need adjusting for a fleece hoodie, because the pile swallows fine detail.
Why Sublimation and All-Over Print Run Longer
Sublimation prints into the fibre rather than onto the surface, and for all-over designs the garment is often cut and sewn after printing rather than before. That is a manufacturing process, not a decoration process, and it carries the timeline of one. Fifteen to twenty working days is realistic and worth planning around.
If you have a fixed date, such as a tournament or a launch, sublimation is the method to commit to earliest. It is also the method where late artwork changes hurt most, because the panels are laid out to the pattern pieces.
The Delay That Is Almost Always Yours
In practice, the biggest variable in any timeline is how fast the customer responds to the proof. A proof sent on a Friday afternoon and approved on Wednesday morning has cost three working days in which absolutely nothing happened. Multiply that across two rounds of revisions and you have lost more time than production takes.
The fix is unglamorous. Decide before you order who has authority to approve. Not who has an opinion, who has authority. Committee approval is the single most reliable way to turn a two-week job into a five-week one.
“"Nothing in production takes as long as waiting for someone senior to look at a PDF."”
Things That Genuinely Push a Job Back
- Low-resolution artwork that has to be redrawn before anything can be separated or digitised.
- Fonts left live in the file instead of outlined, so the type reflows on our end and the proof is wrong.
- A garment colour or size that has gone out of stock at the mill, forcing a substitution conversation.
- Changes requested after approval, which resets the clock rather than pausing it.
- Adding a second print position or a personalisation list late, which changes how the job is planned on the floor.
How to Compress the Timeline Honestly
You cannot skip curing and you cannot skip digitising. What you can do is remove every avoidable pause. Send vector artwork with fonts outlined on day one. Confirm your size split before you order rather than after the proof. Name one approver. Choose a method that suits the deadline: DTF has no per-colour setup and no screen exposure, which makes it the more forgiving choice for a tight, detailed, short-run job.
And build in shipping. Tracked delivery to the UK is typically 2 to 5 working days after dispatch, with longer transit to the USA, Europe and the rest of the world. A garment that finishes production the day before the event is a garment that arrives after it.
Planning Backwards From a Date
If you have a hard deadline, work backwards rather than forwards. Take the event date, subtract delivery, subtract the production window for your method, then subtract a genuine allowance for proofing and revisions. Whatever date that lands on is your real ordering deadline.
Most people do this once, discover the answer is weeks earlier than they assumed, and never order late again. It is a better use of five minutes than any amount of chasing later.