Ordering Tracksuits for Tour Season
By The Velocity Wear Team
Tour tracksuits need to be in hand before load-in on the first date, which means ordering roughly six weeks ahead. The build runs 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, transit follows it, and a touring party has no fixed address once the run starts. Deliver to a base while somebody is still standing in it.
How do you count back from the first date?
Start at load-in rather than at the announcement. Subtract transit, subtract fifteen working days, then subtract the week or two the artwork takes to clear. Six weeks is the comfortable figure. Four is achievable with a simple print. Under three, the honest answer is that the opening dates go out without merch.
Allow a day or two for counting and splitting the stock as well. Sets arrive boxed by size, and somebody has to turn that into a case that fits in a van alongside everything else.
How many sets do you take on the road?
Fifty sets per design is the minimum and on tour it is usually a starting point rather than a stretch. A co-ord sells as one item at a higher price than a tee, so it moves in smaller numbers while earning more per sale, and running out on night three is worse than carrying a box home at the end.
Weight the size run towards the middle and take fewer extremes than a retail drop would, because a merch table cannot restock itself. The price bands take up to 35% off as the quantity climbs, so a second design at fifty sets costs more per piece than one design at a hundred.
Price the set before you commit to it. A co-ord sits at the top of any merch list, and if the price you can realistically charge does not clear the cost by a comfortable margin, a smaller run of a stronger design beats a large run of a weak one.
Where should tour stock be delivered?
To a fixed address with somebody responsible standing at it: a rehearsal room, a management office, a lockup. Venues lose boxes and a tour bus has no delivery slot. We deliver across the UK, the USA and Europe, and the practical question is always who signs for the consignment rather than how far it travels.
If the run crosses borders, plan the paperwork as carefully as the schedule. Delivery times for wholesale tracksuits covers what customs clearance does to a transit estimate once the freight is out of your hands.
Split the delivery if the run has a natural break in it. Half the stock going out at the start and half held at base for a restock partway through means a sold-out opening leg does not leave the rest of the dates staring at empty boxes.
What about a tour announced at short notice?
Cut the decoration to one colour, take a stock colourway, and approve the artwork the day you order. Our tracksuits page carries a from-price of $53 per set against a fifty-set minimum, whatever the timeline happens to look like. If the first date is genuinely too close, aim the delivery at the second week of the run and sell the early shows through a pre-order link.
Ordering a £150 sample alongside the bulk run is still worth doing, because the fee is credited against that order and it gives you a finished set for photography before the stock itself turns up.
