Setting Up a Reorder Schedule for Branded Apparel
By The Velocity Wear Team
A reorder schedule is a calendar of when you will next place an apparel order, decided in advance rather than triggered by someone noticing an empty shelf. It matters because reorders placed in a panic are small, expensive and late, while reorders placed on a schedule are consolidated, cheaper per piece and arrive before anyone is short. The schedule needs three inputs: your burn rate, your size profile, and the full lead time including your own internal approvals.
Calendar Trigger or Stock Trigger
There are two honest ways to run this. A calendar trigger fixes the dates, say February and August, and you order whatever the numbers say on those dates. A stock trigger sets a minimum level per garment and fires an order whenever you drop below it. Calendar triggers give predictable consolidation and predictable budgeting. Stock triggers respond better to unexpected growth but produce orders at awkward moments, often at quantities that barely clear the 20-piece minimum.
Most organisations should run the calendar as the backbone and keep the stock level as an alarm rather than a trigger. If you hit the alarm well before a scheduled date, that is information about your burn rate. It is not automatically a reason to place an emergency order.
Measure What You Actually Issue
Burn rate is the number of pieces leaving stock per month, and it has three components that get habitually underestimated. New starters, which everybody remembers. Replacements for wear, fading and damage, which everybody guesses at. And churn, where a leaver's kit is not recovered and a joiner's kit has to be issued in the same month, which is two garments moving for no change in headcount at all.
Do not model this. Count it. Keep a simple issue log for three months and you will have a better number than any estimate, and you will usually find the real figure is higher than the one you would have assumed.
The Size Profile Is the Bit That Bites
Total stock is a misleading number. A store holding plenty of pieces but nothing in the two most commonly issued sizes is functionally out of stock, and this is the most common way organisations get caught out. Your trigger should be set on the sizes you issue most, not on the aggregate.
It changes what you order, too. Reorders should be weighted towards the middle of the curve far more heavily than a first order was, because the extremes you bought last time are largely still sitting there. Order to correct the shape of your stock, not to repeat the shape of your original purchase.
Build the Lead Time Backwards, Including Your Own Delays
The supplier's part of the timeline is the predictable bit. Production starts at artwork approval, screen printing and embroidery typically take around 10-15 working days from there, sublimation and complex jobs nearer 15-20, and UK tracked delivery is usually 2-5 working days after dispatch. What derails schedules is nearly always internal: the requisition sitting with a budget holder, the proof waiting on someone who is on leave, the size list that needs confirming from three sites.
Time your own internal steps honestly and add them to the front of the lead time. For most organisations the internal portion is longer than the production portion, which is uncomfortable but extremely useful to know.
Fewer, Larger Runs
Every order has to meet the 20-piece minimum in its own right, and screen printing setup is charged per colour on each run. Two orders a year at a decent size beats six small ones on both counts, and the larger quantities take you further into a bulk discount reaching up to around 40%. The counterweight is cash and storage: a year of stock ties up budget and needs somewhere dry to live. Two runs a year is the compromise most organisations settle on, for good reasons.
“"You are hardly ever out of uniform. You are out of mediums, and nobody puts that on a stock report until the week it becomes an emergency."”
Keep the Specification Frozen Between Runs
A reorder is only cheap, and only matches what people are already wearing, if the specification has not moved between runs. Record it once and keep it somewhere that is not an individual's inbox.
- Supplier garment code, plus the exact colour name and colour code.
- Decoration method for each garment in the range.
- Position measured in millimetres from a fixed seam, and the logo width.
- Thread or ink references used on the original run.
- The approved artwork file, named with a version so nobody guesses which is current.
Blanks do get discontinued, and it usually happens between your runs rather than conveniently at the start of a cycle. When it does, order a sample of the replacement before committing the whole run, and be honest about whether the new garment sits alongside the old one or whether you are now running two slightly different uniforms in the same room.
Give It an Owner and a Quiet Slot
A schedule with no named owner is just a document. Put the reorder dates in one person's calendar with a reminder a month ahead, and name a deputy, because the failure mode is always that the person who understood the system left. Place the dates in the quiet part of your operational year rather than beside your busiest period, since a reorder landing in the middle of peak season will be rushed, under-checked and wrong.