Ordering Joggers for Christmas
By The Velocity Wear Team
For joggers in hand before Christmas, place the order in October. Production takes 10 to 15 working days from the moment artwork is approved, delivery sits on top of that, and artwork approval itself usually eats a week of emails. Work back from the date you need the boxes, not the date you want to start selling, and the October deadline falls out of the arithmetic on its own.
How do you count the calendar backwards?
- 1Fix the date the stock has to be in the building. For retail that is a fortnight before you want to sell, not the day of.
- 2Subtract delivery transit to your address, which depends on whether you are in the UK, the USA or Europe.
- 3Subtract 15 working days for production, using the long end of the 10 to 15 window rather than the short one.
- 4Subtract the artwork round trip: files sent, proof back, changes, final sign-off. A week is realistic when more than one person has to approve.
- 5Subtract the quote and sample stage if you have not ordered this garment before.
Run that against a calendar with weekends and bank holidays marked, because production days are working days. The full mechanics are in apparel production lead times explained.
Which spec works for a December drop?
Brushed fleece is the obvious answer and usually the right one: the napped inside is what makes a jogger feel like a winter garment when somebody picks it up off a table. Cuffed hems photograph better for gift listings because the taper is visible in a flat shot. If you are making a matching set, the top and the jogger each need their own fifty, so a two-piece gift offer is a hundred pieces minimum before you count colourways. Our wholesale joggers range lists the from-price of $22 a piece at fifty.
Is there still time for a sample in October?
Usually yes, if you decide quickly. A sample costs £150 and comes off the bill when the bulk order follows, so the real cost is a week of calendar rather than the money. Order it the same day you settle the fabric and cut, approve it fast, and it slots in ahead of production without moving the December date. Our samples page explains what arrives. Leave the decision until November and the sample becomes the thing that makes you late.
What happens if the date slips anyway?
Two things usually cause it: artwork that keeps changing, and a size split nobody signs off. Both are inside your control. Freeze the artwork on a named date and put one person in charge of approval. If you are already tight, drop the number of designs rather than the quantity per design, because every extra design restarts the fifty and adds a proof cycle. The same discipline applies to the earlier deadline in ordering joggers for Black Friday, which lands before this one and often shares the artwork.
Does a bigger December order cost less per piece?
It does, and Christmas is the one time of year the volume is easy to justify. The discount runs up to 35% against the fifty-piece price as you climb the tiers, so the gap between ordering a hundred and ordering five hundred is worth modelling before you commit. Count what you would sell in January as well as December: stock that arrives in time for Christmas is also stock you own for the new year.
Plan the size split with exchanges in mind as well. Joggers bought as gifts get returned for a different size more often than almost anything else, because the person buying is guessing on behalf of somebody else. Holding a few extra pieces in the middle of the range turns a refund into a swap, which keeps the sale. That is easier to fund when the run is deep enough to sit in a lower tier, and it is another argument for deciding the quantity in October rather than topping up in December, when a reorder cannot physically arrive in time.
