Ordering T-Shirts for Leavers Season
By The Velocity Wear Team
Leavers shirts have to arrive with weeks of term left, not days, so the order belongs in spring. Production is 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, and on a leavers run the artwork is usually a name list that is not final. Freeze that list first, then order. The list is what delays these jobs, not the printing.
When does a leavers order have to be placed?
Aim for the shirts to land at least three weeks before the last day, which gives you time to hand them out, deal with a missing size and let the year group actually wear them. Count back three weeks of production at the long end, plus transit, plus the approval round. That is roughly seven weeks before the final date, so a July leaving date means ordering in the second half of May at the latest, and April if you want to be relaxed.
The complication specific to schools and colleges is that spring terms are broken up by holidays, and the person who approves the design is often teaching full time. A design approved on the last day before a two-week break has lost two weeks. Build that into the plan rather than discovering it.
How do you handle the name list on the back?
A name list is a single artwork, not personalisation, which is the thing that makes these jobs affordable. Everyone gets the same back print containing everyone's name. That means one set of screens, one design and one run of 50 pieces minimum. It also means the list must be final before approval, because changing one name means changing every shirt.
Practical rules that save trouble: collect the names in a spreadsheet rather than a group chat, ask for the exact spelling and any accents, decide in advance whether nicknames are allowed, and set a published cut-off date that is a week before your real cut-off. Send the list as text, not as a picture of a list. We set the type so it fits the print area, so do not spend an evening laying it out yourself. What a back print can hold at a given size is covered in print placement on t-shirts.
What about students who ask after the deadline?
This happens on every leavers order, so decide the policy before it does. There are three honest answers. Order a handful of spare shirts in the common sizes as part of the original run, which costs you a few pieces and solves nearly every late request. Tell latecomers the answer is no, which is clean but unpopular. Or run a second order, which means another 50 pieces at the minimum, because the minimum is per design and a reprint of the same design is a new run.
The first option is almost always right. Adding ten spares to a 90-piece order may also push you into a better tier, since pricing steps at 50 to 99, 100 to 249, 250 to 499, 500 to 999 and 1,000 plus, with the discount reaching 35% off the 50-piece rate at the top. From-prices start at $13 a piece and sit on the wholesale t-shirts page. The maths for sizing against a fixed headcount is worked through in how many t-shirts should I order for an event.
Should a school take a sample first?
If the shirt is being paid for by parents, yes. A £150 sample, credited against the bulk order, gives you a physical garment to show at a parents' evening or to photograph for the order form, and it proves the name print is legible at the size it will actually be. Small type in a long list is the one thing that genuinely surprises people, and it is far better to find out in April than in June. The samples page explains the process and the credit.
Order the sample as soon as the design layout is settled, even if the names are still being collected. You are checking the garment, the colour and the type size, none of which depend on the final list.
