T-Shirts for Sports Clubs: lead time
By The Velocity Wear Team
Club t-shirts are produced in 10-15 working days from artwork approval, with delivery transit on top. The clock does not start when the committee decides to order - it starts when artwork is signed off. For most clubs the gap between those two moments is where the delay lives, and it is usually spent collecting sizes and waiting on a sponsor to send a usable logo file.
What happens during the 10-15 working days?
Fabric is cut in the sizes you ordered, screens or embroidery files are made per design and colour, the shirts are decorated position by position, then cured, checked and packed. Personalised shirts with names or numbers add handling because each garment is treated individually rather than as a stack. None of this compresses much; the window is 10-15 working days because that is how long the sequence takes, not because of a queue.
When should the committee place the order?
Work backwards from the first fixture you need the shirts for, and be honest about the committee stages. A realistic plan for a season opener looks like this.
- 1Six to eight weeks out: agree the design and the budget, and get the sponsor logo as a vector file.
- 2Five weeks out: circulate the size form with a hard closing date.
- 3Four weeks out: approve artwork. The 10-15 working day production window starts here.
- 4Two weeks out: shirts arrive, leaving time to sort, check and distribute at training rather than in a car park before kick-off.
If you also want a sample in hand before committing, add its turnaround and your review time in front of all of that. The sports clubs page sets out what clubs usually order together, and the club sample post explains where the £150 fits.
What actually causes delay?
Almost never production. It is the sponsor logo arriving as a screenshot from a website, a size form that three players never returned, a colour change requested after approval, or a committee that needs a meeting to sign anything off and meets monthly. Each of those adds days before the clock starts. The fix is procedural: nominate one person to approve artwork without a meeting, and close the size form on the date you said you would - size splits covers how to fill the gaps for players who never reply.
What if the date is already tight?
Simplify the job. Fewer print positions, fewer colours, and no names or numbers will move faster than a fully personalised squad set. Drop personalisation to a second smaller run later if the club insists on it. Ordering a single design across the whole club rather than separate senior and junior versions also cuts the work in half and sits better on the price ladder, which club t-shirt cost goes into. What you should not do is approve artwork you have not checked in order to start the clock early; a reprint costs far more days than a careful proof.
How does delivery transit fit in?
Transit sits after the 10-15 working days and varies by destination - we deliver across the UK, USA and Europe. Build it into the plan as its own line rather than assuming production ends with shirts in your hands. A club in the same country as the delivery address should still leave a clear week between expected arrival and the fixture, because an order that lands the morning of a match gives you no room to swap a size that does not fit. The wholesale t-shirts page is the place to start the quote once your dates are set.
