Restocking Branded Kit for Sports Clubs
By The Velocity Wear Team
A club restock is fifty pieces of the design, built in 10-15 working days from artwork approval. Because that is too slow for a mid-season joiner, the practical answer is stock held from the original run rather than a quick repeat. Artwork and colour references are retained at our end, so the second run starts faster than the first.
Who joins mid-season, and what do they wear?
New members, replacements for damaged kit, and anyone whose garment was sized wrong at handout. Together that is a steady trickle rather than an occasional event, and it is entirely predictable in volume even though the names are not. Clubs that plan for it hold spares; clubs that do not end up with three members in the wrong kit for half a season.
Keep the spares unnumbered so they fit anyone. A numbered garment is specific to one player and useless to the next, which turns a spare into dead stock. Our sports clubs page lists the items clubs repeat most.
Will next year's batch sit next to this year's?
Close enough for training kit, and worth thinking about for playing kit. Fabric is dyed in batches, so two runs made a year apart can differ very slightly under bright light even from the same reference. On a pitch, in motion, this is not noticeable; in a team photograph with two batches in the same row, it occasionally is.
If a club wants one uniform appearance across a whole squad, the reliable route is a single larger run stored at the club. That also earns a better tier, since the rate drops by as much as 35% from the 50-piece price as volume rises. What is retained between runs is covered in can I reorder the same design later.
How much should a club hold in the cupboard?
Around a fifth of the run for most clubs, weighted toward the sizes actually issued rather than spread evenly. The number that matters is the wait: fifty pieces and three weeks means the cupboard has to carry the club through three weeks of demand, plus whatever it takes the committee to authorise the order.
- Hold spares in the two or three most-issued sizes, unnumbered.
- Record what has been issued and to whom after every handout.
- Set the reorder trigger at a stock level, not at an empty shelf.
A written reorder schedule turns all of this into a calendar entry. Setting up a reorder schedule sets out how to build one, and the full garment range is on the wholesale overview.
What changes when a sponsor changes?
A new sponsor means new artwork, which means new setup and a design that is no longer the same as last season's. It is worth timing sponsor renewals to the kit order rather than the other way round, so the club is not producing two versions of the same shirt in one year.
How does a change of committee affect restocking?
Badly, unless the details were written down. Kit knowledge usually lives in one volunteer head: which garment, which colour reference, what size everyone takes, what is still in the cupboard. When that person steps down, the next order starts from scratch and often lands slightly different from the last one.
A single handover page fixes it. Garment and colour, decoration method and placement, the issue log, the current stock count and the supplier contact. We retain the artwork and production references at our end, but only the club can record what it decided and what it still has. Clubs that keep that page place repeat orders in an email; clubs that do not repeat the whole specification exercise every few seasons, and usually end up with kit that has drifted slightly from what the club agreed in the first place.
