Restocking Branded Kit for Schools
By The Velocity Wear Team
A school reorders by quoting the original design and quantity, and the second run goes through the same 10 to 15 working day build as the first. The minimum still applies at 50 pieces per design. What changes between runs is the fabric dye lot, so a top-up placed months later can sit very slightly off the original on colour.
How does a school reorder the same design?
Send the approved artwork back with the quantity and the size split. Nothing has to be redesigned or re-approved from scratch if the file has not changed, which is why the repeat order is faster to organise than the first even though the production time is identical.
Treat a reorder as a new run, not an amendment to an old one. It has its own minimum, its own tier and its own delivery date. The mechanics across products are covered in can I reorder the same design later.
Where schools go wrong is assuming the previous order is somehow still open. It is not, and a request to add thirty pieces to a run delivered in March is a fresh run in every respect except the design work. Knowing that in advance changes how you size the first order, which is usually the real lesson.
Will the second batch match the first on colour?
Close, but not guaranteed identical. Fabric is dyed in lots and two lots produced months apart can differ enough to notice when two garments are held side by side, though nobody spots it across a playground. Print colour is far more stable than garment colour, so the logo will match even when the cloth shifts a fraction.
If an exact match matters, the honest way to get it is to order the whole quantity at once and store the surplus. The second best is to reorder promptly rather than a year later, and to keep a piece from the first run to hold against the new one.
When is the right moment to place the top-up?
Before you run out, which sounds obvious and is routinely ignored. A school that reorders at zero stock is without kit for the whole build plus transit. Set a trigger level instead: when the cupboard drops to a fixed number of pieces, the order goes in that week regardless of whose budget line it comes from.
For anything tied to a fixed date, work back from the date rather than from the stock level. The approach is set out in when to reorder and how much buffer to hold.
What should the school keep on file between runs?
Keep the approved artwork file, the garment and colour reference, the size split you ordered and the split you actually needed, and one physical piece from the run. Those five things turn a reorder into a single email. Without them, somebody spends a fortnight rebuilding a decision that was already made.
Store it somewhere that survives staff turnover rather than in one person's inbox. The schools and leavers page shows the lines schools repeat most, and the wholesale range sets out where the tiers begin for a larger repeat run.
A short note on the file about what went wrong last time is worth as much as the artwork itself. If the chest logo sat two centimetres high, or the mediums ran small, or the delivery arrived the week of exams, write it down. That is the institutional memory a school rarely keeps and always needs, because the person placing the next order is often not the person who placed the last one.
