Polo Shirts for Offices: samples
By The Velocity Wear Team
An office polo sample is £150 and that amount is credited against the bulk order when you place it. You receive one finished garment in your fabric and colour with your logo applied exactly as the run will apply it. For a first order, or for any order where a committee has to agree, it is the fastest way to end a debate that emails will otherwise continue for weeks.
Why sample a garment you can see on screen?
Because a photograph cannot tell you how a collar sits under a jacket, how the fabric looks under office lighting, or whether your brand colour has come out warmer in thread than it does in print. It also cannot tell you how a logo reads from the far side of a meeting room, which is the distance most office polos are actually viewed from. All of that is a thirty-second judgement once the garment is in a hand, and an endless one before it exists.
There is an internal argument for it too. Apparel decisions involve more people than they should, and a physical sample converts opinions into a yes or a no. Pass it round the people who will have to approve the spend, and the sign-off that would have delayed your production slot happens before the clock starts. Polo shirts for offices: lead time explains why that ordering matters.
What should you look at when it arrives?
Start with the logo at conversational distance, then at arm's length, then in a photograph taken on a phone. Offices see their own apparel most often in pictures, so if the badge disappears in one, it is too small. Next, check the collar, which is the part that decides whether a polo looks smart with a jacket over it. Then wash it once and look again, because the honest verdict on any garment arrives after the first cycle rather than out of the bag.
- Logo size and position, judged at real distance and in a photograph
- Colour against your brand palette in daylight and under office lighting
- Collar shape and placket finish before and after a wash
- Fabric weight for a room that is air conditioned all year
- Fit on somebody from the team, not only on the person ordering
Who in the office should try it on?
Someone whose size sits in the middle of the team, and ideally two people of different builds. The point is not to check every size, which a size chart does better, but to see how the cut behaves on a real body. If you are ordering both a shaped and a unisex fit, sample the one the majority will wear. The fit range is set out on the wholesale polo shirts page and in custom polo shirts: piqué, fit and embroidery.
How does the credit work in practice?
The £150 is charged when the sample is made and taken off the bulk order when that order is placed, so the effective cost of sampling is only the time it adds. Samples are never free, because producing a single garment through a full setup costs close to what producing the first fifty costs. If the sample changes your mind about the garment or the decoration, the credit still applies to whatever you order instead. Start the conversation from the corporate page with the fabric and logo you have in mind.
Photograph the sample before it goes into circulation. A clean picture of the finished garment is what you will want for the internal announcement, the intranet page and the email that collects sizes, and taking it while the polo is new saves staging a shot later with one that has already been round the office. It also records exactly what was approved, which is worth having at reorder time.
