Planning Apparel Lead Times So You Never Air Freight
By The Velocity Wear Team
Ask any manufacturer where orders lose time and none will say production. They will say approvals. Production is a known duration that can be scheduled; approvals are an unknown duration inside someone else’s organisation, and that is where deadlines go.
The real stages of an order
- 1**Enquiry to quote.** Fast, provided the brief is complete. Incomplete briefs are the first hidden delay — a quote cannot be produced without quantity, garment, decoration method and placement.
- 2**Artwork preparation and proof.** Depends on the state of the file you send. Vector artwork is quick; a small JPEG of a logo means a redraw.
- 3**Approval.** Yours. Unbounded, and the single largest source of slippage.
- 4**Sampling, where required.** Adds a cycle, and another approval.
- 5**Production.** Predictable, and scheduled once approval lands.
- 6**Freight and clearance.** Predictable by mode.
- 7**Receipt and distribution.** Frequently forgotten in event planning.
Why approval is so slow
Because it usually involves more people than anyone planned for. A proof goes to a marketing manager who wants the brand lead to see it, who is away, and returns with a comment that requires a new proof. Two rounds of that is a fortnight, and nobody in the chain feels like they caused a delay.
The fix is procedural rather than technical. Decide before you order who approves, that their decision is final, and that they are available in the window. One named approver with authority removes more delay than any production improvement available.
Where to put buffer
- **Before approval, generously.** This is the stage that overruns, so this is where slack belongs.
- **Around freight, moderately.** Customs holds are uncommon but not rare, and they are entirely outside your control.
- **Before the event, not at it.** Stock arriving the day before leaves no room to discover a problem. A week earlier is not caution, it is competence.
- **Not inside production.** Padding production tells you nothing and wastes real time you may need elsewhere.
Working backwards from a fixed date
For anything date-bound — an event, a season, a campaign — work backwards from the date you need stock in hand, not the date of the event. Add distribution time. Add a week of contingency. Then set the order date, and treat it as fixed.
The reason this matters is that the fallback for a missed date is air freight, which can cost more than the discount you were chasing when you delayed the order to consolidate it.
What makes an order fast
Vector artwork. A complete brief with quantity, sizes, garment and placement decided. A single named approver. Stock garment colours rather than bespoke dye. A decoration method suited to the quantity. Those five things routinely move a schedule more than anything happening on the factory floor.
