Budgeting a Bulk Jacket Order
By The Velocity Wear Team
Budget a jacket order in five lines: the garment, the decoration, the finishing, the sample, and getting it to you. Jackets are quoted per job, so the garment line depends on style and quantity, with discounts reaching up to 35% off the 50-piece price at volume. The £150 sample is credited back against the bulk order. Freight and any duty are the lines most often forgotten.
What are the five lines in a jacket budget?
The garment cost per piece, multiplied by the quantity. The decoration, which is a setup per placement plus a run cost per piece. The finishing, meaning custom woven neck labels, tear-out labels, swing tags and packaging if you want them. The sample fee. And the logistics: freight to a UK, US or European address, plus any import charges where it lands. Write those five down before you ask for a quote and the quote becomes easy to check rather than something you have to interpret. The published tier structure is on the pricing page and the styles on the wholesale jackets page.
How much does decoration move the total?
Enough to be worth designing around. Each separate placement carries its own setup and its own production step, so a chest logo plus a back print costs more than either alone, and a third placement on the sleeve adds a third time. Method matters too: embroidery is priced by stitch count, so a dense logo with lots of fill costs more than a clean wordmark, while screen printing is priced by the number of colours. Sublimation and DTF behave differently again. Simplifying a mark before the quote is one of the few ways to save money without ordering less.
Where does the sample fee sit in the numbers?
Above the line, then refunded into it. A sample costs £150 and the fee is credited against a bulk order, so budget it as a cost that disappears if the order goes ahead and stays if it does not. On a first jacket order with an unfamiliar fabric, that is a reasonable price for removing the risk of fifty wrong garments. On a repeat of a garment you already know, it is usually unnecessary. Either way it belongs in the plan, not as a surprise on the first invoice.
How do you leave room for freight and duty?
Ask for the freight figure with the quote rather than after it, and find out whether the price is delivered or ex-works. Jackets take up volume, so outerwear freight is proportionally higher than it is for flat goods. Import charges depend on the destination and are yours to pay, so if the stock is crossing a border, confirm the position before you commit the budget rather than after the pallet has left. Timing affects cash flow too: the 10 to 15 working day build plus transit is set out in apparel production lead times explained. If the jackets will be resold, the margin side is covered in pricing jackets for resale.
Finally, agree the currency early. Invoicing is available in seven currencies, and which one you choose determines who carries the exchange movement between quote and payment. For a small order that is noise. For a large outerwear run placed weeks before the invoice falls due, it can be a real number, and it is much easier to settle at the quote stage than to renegotiate afterwards. Write the agreed currency on the purchase order rather than assuming it follows your address.
