Why a Sample Comes Before Bulk
By The Velocity Wear Team
A sample turns a screen mockup into something you can hold, wear and wash. It settles fit, fabric hand, colour under real light and how the decoration sits on the garment — four things that no digital preview has ever got right. A sample costs £150 and that amount is credited against the bulk order, so for a buyer who goes ahead it is a staging payment rather than an extra line.
What does the sample actually settle?
Fit is the big one. A size label is a manufacturer's opinion, and the gap between two suppliers' idea of a large is wide enough to ruin an order for a staff team. Put the sample on a real person of that size and look at the shoulder seam, the sleeve length and how it sits after an hour rather than in the first ten seconds. Colour is second: screens lie, and a navy that looked right on a monitor can read black in an office and blue outdoors. Third is the decoration itself — how heavy a print feels against skin, how flat an embroidery lies, whether a puff design holds its edge. You can order one from the samples page.
Wash it. This is the step buyers skip and regret. One cycle at the temperature your wearers will actually use tells you about shrinkage, about whether the print cracks at the fold, and about whether the fabric surface pills. Nobody can tell you that from a photograph, and finding out after 300 pieces have shipped is an expensive way to learn.
What can one sample never show you?
Consistency across a run. A sample is one garment, and it proves that this garment can be made correctly, not that 500 will be. That is what the approval record is for: the sample becomes the reference the bulk run is measured against, which is why it is worth keeping rather than wearing until it fades. It also will not show you how the design looks in sizes you did not sample — a chest print scaled onto a small and an extra-large lands differently, and if both are in your order, consider a second sample rather than assuming.
It will not settle your artwork problems either. If the file is low resolution or the fonts are not outlined, the sample will faithfully reproduce the problem. Getting that right first is covered in artwork files that do not cause delays.
How long should you live with it before approving?
A few days, not an afternoon. Wear it, wash it, show it to whoever will have to wear the run, and let somebody who was not in the design conversation look at it cold. Objections that surface on day three are the ones worth having. Then write the changes down as measurements and references rather than adjectives — "2cm shorter in the sleeve" travels, "a bit less baggy" does not.
Factor the round trip into your calendar. Production is 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, and the sample stage sits before that clock starts, not inside it. A buyer working to a fixed event date should start the sample conversation a good few weeks earlier than the production window alone suggests. The garment range and the from-prices are on the wholesale page, and the way minimums interact with revisions is set out in what a minimum order actually means.
Does the sample fee come back?
It is credited against the bulk order when you place it, so a buyer who proceeds effectively pays it once as part of the total. If you decide not to order, you have spent £150 and kept the garment, which is still a cheaper answer than 50 pieces of something that turned out to be wrong. Samples are never free here, and any supplier offering them for nothing is recovering the cost elsewhere in your quote.
