Planning End of Season Merch for Clubs: Timing and Sizing
By The Velocity Wear Team
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End of season is the best ordering window in the club calendar, because it is the only point when the squad is confirmed, everyone is in the same room and the budget position is actually known. Use presentation night as your fixed date and count backwards: around 10-15 working days of production from artwork approval for screen printing or embroidery, nearer 15-20 for sublimation, plus 2-5 working days of tracked UK delivery. Then use the same moment to order next season's kit while you still have the squad list.
The One Evening Everyone Is in the Same Room
Club administration lives and dies on how easy it is to get information out of people. During the season you are chasing sizes through group chats where half the messages are match reactions and nobody answers on a Tuesday. At the presentation evening or the last fixture of the season, they are all physically present, in a good mood, and unable to ignore you.
Take the sizes then. Bring a printed list, a pen, and a set of sample garments if you have them so people can hold the thing rather than guess. Twenty minutes of that will save you three weeks of chasing.
Sample Garments Beat Size Charts
Players guess badly, and they guess in both directions. Some order a medium because they have always ordered a medium, and some order a 2XL because they want it oversized without checking what that actually means in that particular garment. If you can put a real hoodie on the table, people pick correctly, and you will not spend the summer swapping pieces between families.
If you cannot, publish the actual garment measurements rather than a generic chart, and tell people to measure a hoodie they already own flat across the chest. That single instruction removes most sizing errors.
Leavers' Hoodies and Squad Name Backs
The full squad list printed on the back of a hoodie is one of the few pieces of club merchandise people genuinely keep. It works because it dates itself in a way people are happy about, unlike most dated merchandise. Get the spellings from the registration list rather than from memory, and have a second person check it, because a misspelt name on a keepsake is permanent.
Squad numbers and individual names on the front or sleeve are done with vinyl, priced per item, which is fine on a keepsake run but does add a step. Decide before you take orders whether personalisation is included or optional, because half-and-half runs create confusion at handout.
Presentation Night Is a Real Deadline
If the hoodies are being handed out at the presentation evening, that date is fixed and public, and arriving the following week is a visible failure. Production starts at artwork approval, not at order placement, which is the detail that catches out clubs run by volunteers. A proof sitting unopened while the treasurer is away for a week comes directly out of your schedule.
Set your artwork deadline at least a week earlier than you think you need, then approve the proof the day it arrives. Everything downstream of that is predictable.
Order Next Season While the Squad Exists
This is the part most clubs miss. At the end of a season you know who is staying, you know the age group each junior is moving into, and you have sizes in your hand. That is the ideal moment to order next season's training tops and staff kit, not August, when everyone has grown, half the committee is on holiday and every other club in the country is ordering at once.
Ordering in the quiet part of the year also gives you room to fix problems calmly. If a colour is wrong or a size run is short, you have weeks to sort it rather than days before the first fixture.
What to Print and What to Leave Off
Clubs tend to over-decorate end of season kit, and it costs money without improving the garment.
- Keep the crest simple for embroidery; fine lines fill in and small text becomes unreadable in thread.
- Limit screen print colours, because setup is charged per colour and a five-colour design is a noticeably more expensive garment than a two-colour one.
- Put the season on it if it is a keepsake, and leave it off anything you want to keep selling next year.
- Sponsor logos need the sponsor's approved artwork file, requested early rather than the week of the order.
- Choose the hoodie weight deliberately; around 350 GSM feels like something people keep, and a thin one feels like something people lose.
“"The last hour of the last fixture is the only time your whole squad is in one room. Take sizes then."”
Paying for It Before the Subs Run Out
Club money is at its thinnest in the close season, so collect payment as you take orders rather than after delivery. One consolidated club order beats several small ones, since the minimum is 50 pieces per order with sizes mixed freely, and bulk discounts reach up to around 35% as quantities rise. Combining seniors, juniors and coaching staff into a single run is usually the difference between a hoodie people grumble about paying for and one that feels like good value.
