Ordering Tracksuits for Leavers Season
By The Velocity Wear Team
Start a leavers tracksuit order in the spring term for delivery before the last term ends. The build is 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, but the slowest part is collecting names and sizes from an entire year group. Begin that six weeks before you intend to approve anything and the rest of the timeline looks after itself.
How early does a leavers order need to begin?
Work backwards from the last day anybody is on site. Subtract transit, subtract three weeks for the build, then subtract the six weeks a size list genuinely takes when it depends on teenagers returning a form. That puts the start of the process a full term ahead of delivery, which is why it usually begins in February or March.
The build itself is almost never the problem. Leavers orders that arrive late have generally spent a month waiting on the last fifteen names.
Agree who signs the design off before any of it starts. Leavers artwork gets approved by students, checked by a head of year and occasionally vetoed by a head teacher, and discovering that chain after a proof has gone out costs a fortnight. One named approver at the end of it keeps the timeline honest.
How do you collect names and sizes without chaos?
One form, one deadline, one person collecting. Publish the size chart with the form rather than after it, and show a real garment if you can, because a year group guessing at sizes produces a return list in July. Sizes mix freely inside the fifty and the top and jogger are picked separately, so the form needs to ask for both.
Set the deadline a fortnight before you actually need the list. The people who miss the first deadline are the reason the second one exists. Cutting apparel returns with better fit guidance is worth reading before the form goes out.
Who pays, and at what point?
Collect from the year group before the order is placed rather than after it lands. A pre-order with payment attached also produces the most accurate size list you will ever get, because people who have paid tend to read the size chart. Fifty sets per design is the minimum, so a small year group means either spares or one shared design across forms.
Cost per set falls as the order grows, with up to 35% coming off through the volume bands. A school running one design across the whole year group lands in a much better band than three forms ordering separately, which is worth raising before anybody designs three versions.
Keep the money and the size list in one place. A form taking payment alongside the two sizes gives you a single list to hand over, while payments collected separately from sizes produce two lists that never quite agree. Reconciling them in June, with a term ending around you, is the job nobody volunteers for.
What derails a leavers order?
- A back print listing names, collected late, with three spellings still unresolved at approval.
- A design signed off by students and then changed by the school after production has been scheduled.
- Sizes copied from a list made last year rather than measured this year.
- A colourway chosen to match a uniform that is being replaced in September.
Every one of those is solvable in March and expensive in June. If the design is new, order a £150 sample early; the fee is credited against the bulk order, and a set on a table gets a decision out of a staff room faster than an email thread ever will. Sets start at $53 on our wholesale tracksuits page.
