Ordering T-Shirts for Christmas
By The Velocity Wear Team
For shirts in hand before Christmas, place the order in October. Production takes 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, and that clock only starts once the artwork is signed off, which itself takes a few days of back and forth. Add transit, add a buffer for the courier congestion that builds through December, and October is the month that leaves room for a mistake.
How do you count the deadline backwards?
Work from the date the boxes have to be open on your side, not the date they arrive. Then subtract, in this order: two to four days of handling and delivery transit, 15 working days of production taken at the long end rather than the short one, and three to five days for artwork to go over, come back with a change and be approved. That totals roughly five weeks before you count a single day of slack.
Then add the slack, because December is the one month where courier networks run at capacity and a one-day slip is not a one-day slip. Six to seven weeks ahead of the date you want them open is a comfortable place to be. If the shirts are going to an event with a fixed date rather than a shop, treat that fixed date as a week earlier than it is, and thank yourself later.
Does the sample fit inside the timeline?
It does if you order it early, and it is the single best use of a week in October. The £150 sample is credited against the bulk order, so a buyer who goes on to place the run pays for it once in effect. What it buys you is certainty on the thing you cannot judge from a screen: how the printed red actually sits on the garment colour, whether the chest placement is where you pictured it, and whether the fit is what your customers expect.
Where buyers get caught is ordering the sample in late November and then discovering they want a change. A change at that point means re-approving artwork, which restarts the production clock. Order the sample as soon as the design is roughly settled, not once it is final. Details of the process sit on the samples page, and the wider order sequence is laid out in your first bulk t-shirt order.
How many should a Christmas run be?
The minimum is 50 pieces per design, and sizes inside that 50 can be split however you like. For a Christmas run the more useful question is how many of the 50 are actually going to move. A seasonal graphic has a short shelf life: a shirt with a date or a year on it is dead stock in January, while a shirt with a festive design and no year can come back out next December.
Two habits help. First, weight the size curve towards the middle: medium and large usually absorb half a retail run between them. Second, if you are running two designs, be honest that you are committing to 100 pieces, not 50, because the minimum applies per design. A single strong design at 100 pieces reaches a better price tier than two designs at 50 each, and it leaves you with one thing to sell rather than two things to explain. Current from-prices are on the wholesale t-shirts page, and the sizing maths for a fixed audience is worked through in how many t-shirts should I order for an event.
What if you have already missed October?
Do not assume it is over, but change how you brief. Send finished artwork rather than a concept, pick a stock garment colour rather than a colour match, keep the print to one location, and say in the first message that the date is fixed. Every one of those removes a round trip. The thing that kills a late order is not production speed, it is a design still being argued over while the calendar runs. Shirts start at $13 a piece at the 50-piece minimum, and a clean brief on a late order is worth more than a discount.
