Jackets & Outerwear for Trades: lead time
By The Velocity Wear Team
A trades jacket order takes 10 to 15 working days to build once artwork is approved, plus transit to your address. Add time at the front for the quote, the proof and the size collection, and a realistic total from first enquiry to jackets on a crew is around five to six weeks. Order in late summer for winter and the timing never becomes urgent.
How long does a trades jacket order take end to end?
Break it into four blocks. Quoting takes as long as the brief is unclear. Artwork and proofing take a few days if the logo file is ready and much longer if it is not. Production is the fixed block: 10 to 15 working days from approval. Transit follows, and its length depends on whether the delivery is UK, US or European. Only the third block is out of your hands, which is why late orders are almost always caused by the first two rather than by the factory. The trades range is on the construction and trades page and the outerwear styles on the wholesale jackets page.
When should a winter order be placed?
Late summer, which feels absurd while it is warm and feels obvious in November. The reason is not capacity but attention: once the cold arrives, every site manager wants jackets at once and yours becomes an urgent request rather than a planned one. Ordering ahead also means the size collection happens while people are in the office rather than scattered across sites in the dark. If you are buying a full year of kit, one annual order also reaches a better discount tier than several small ones.
What delays an order once it has been placed?
Three things, in order of frequency. Artwork that arrives in the wrong format or as an outdated version of the logo, which costs days before the proof even exists. Approval that sits in an inbox while the person who has to sign it is on site. And late changes, which restart the production clock because screens and embroidery files are made at approval. A useful habit is to name one person who can approve, and to tell them the date the proof is coming. The timeline in more detail is in apparel production lead times explained.
Can part of an order be brought forward?
Splitting a run is a conversation to have at the quote stage rather than mid-production, and it affects the price because the operations no longer happen in one pass. In most cases the better answer is to order the full quantity at once, take the whole delivery, and stage the distribution yourself. A sample at £150, credited against the bulk order, can also cover the immediate need to show a client or a director what the kit will look like while the main run is building. What to include on branded site kit is covered in construction and trade workwear branding.
Put the order on an annual cycle and the whole question stops being a scramble. Pick a month, review what is left in the store from last year, collect sizes from the crew, and place one order that covers the year including replacements and new starters. That rhythm reaches a better price tier than reactive buying, it removes the urgency that causes mistakes at artwork stage, and it means the answer to a site manager asking for four jackets in November is a cupboard rather than a purchase order.
