T-Shirts for Agencies: lead time
By The Velocity Wear Team
Production runs 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, before delivery transit. For an agency that means the launch date is not the date you place the order — it is the date you approve the file. Add a sample round and transit on top, and a campaign tee wants roughly five to six weeks of runway from brief to boxes on site.
What does the 10 to 15 working day window cover?
It starts the moment artwork is approved and ends when the finished garments leave production. Inside it sit the separations or transfer preparation, screen making where screen printing is used, the print or stitch run itself, curing, quality checks, folding and packing. None of those steps are optional, and none of them start until the file is signed off.
Delivery transit sits outside that window. A UK delivery is quick; a run going to a US or European address for a launch needs its own allowance. We deliver across the UK, USA and Europe, so the practical question for an agency is where the boxes have to land, not just when they have to be finished.
Where do agency timelines actually slip?
Almost never in production. They slip in the approval chain, because a campaign tee usually has to clear a creative lead, an account lead and a client marketing team, and each of those is a queue. The other reliable loser of days is artwork that arrives in the wrong format — a low-resolution raster where a vector separation is needed, or a logo with no defined colour reference.
Build the schedule backwards from the launch date and put a named owner against every approval. The days you are trying to protect are the ones before the clock even starts.
How should the sample fit into a campaign schedule?
Give it its own slot. The sample is £150, credited against the bulk order, and it is the only point at which anyone physically holds the garment before 50 pieces exist. If the client needs to see the tee in a meeting, that meeting date is a fixed point in the schedule and the sample has to land before it.
Agencies running several activations from one design can sample once and then order in tiers, which also improves the unit price — the cost guide covers how the tiers work. Blanks and from-prices are on the wholesale t-shirts page.
What can be decided in parallel to save time?
More than most schedules assume. These four run alongside each other rather than in sequence.
- 1Blank selection — pick the 150–240 GSM weight and the regular or boxy fit while artwork is still in design
- 2Size curve — agree the split early, since it does not depend on the graphic at all
- 3Delivery addresses and contacts — confirm them before approval, not after production ends
- 4Care labelling and any private label requirements, which have to be specified up front rather than added later
If the campaign sits inside a broader staff or client programme, the corporate page explains how repeat kit is scheduled. For event-driven work where the date cannot move at all, our conference and event t-shirt guide goes through the same countdown from the other end.
What should the agency tell the client about timing?
Give them a date, not a duration. Clients hear ten to fifteen working days and mentally file it as two weeks from whenever they last thought about it, which is rarely the same day the artwork is signed. Send back a schedule with three dated milestones — artwork locked, sample approved, garments delivered — and make the first one the client's responsibility in writing.
Then hold it. The most useful thing an agency can do on a merchandise line is refuse the late change, because the cost of a missed launch lands on the agency regardless of who caused it. A schedule with named owners is what makes that refusal a process decision rather than an argument.
