Briefing a Supplier for Corporate Uniforms
By The Velocity Wear Team
A usable uniform brief carries five answers: how many people, which garments, what colours, where the logo sits, and the date you need stock in hand. Corporate uniforms start at $20 a piece at the 50-piece minimum, and a brief holding those five answers comes back as a firm figure rather than a range. Everything else is detail that can be settled while the sample runs.
Before any of that, decide who is answering. A brief written by one person in isolation tends to omit the things only the people wearing the kit know, and a brief written by committee never gets sent at all. The workable middle is one owner collecting three specific inputs: what the current garments get wrong, what the dress code requires, and what the budget holder will sign off. Fifteen minutes gathering those beforehand is worth more than any amount of redrafting afterwards, and it means the answers stay consistent when the supplier comes back with questions.
What does a supplier actually need from you?
Headcount first, because it decides the tier your price sits in. Then the garment list: a uniform programme is rarely one item, and shirts, polos, aprons and an outer layer are usually quoted as one set of lines on the wholesale uniforms page. Say how many of each you expect, even roughly. A supplier can work with "about 80 polos and 40 aprons" and cannot work with "uniforms for the team".
Colours matter more than people expect. Give a reference the factory can match rather than a name, because a house navy and a stock navy are rarely the same navy. If your brand book carries a Pantone reference, send it. If it does not, send a photograph of something already in the right colour and say so.
How do you describe a garment you have not seen yet?
Describe the job the garment does instead of guessing at a spec sheet. A shirt worn eight hours behind a counter has different demands from one worn for a monthly client visit, and the fabric weight gets confirmed against that description rather than picked off a list. Say how often it will be washed, whether it goes in an industrial machine, and whether anyone tucks it in.
Fit is worth a line of its own. Relaxed, standard and tailored all exist in the same size label, and stating which one you mean saves a round of revisions. If any part of the team has told you the current kit is too short in the body or too tight across the shoulders, put that in the brief verbatim.
Which artwork files make a brief usable?
Vector artwork is the short answer. A logo supplied as an EPS, AI or layered PDF can be separated for screen printing, digitised for embroidery or sent straight to DTF without anyone redrawing it. A screenshot pulled off a website cannot, and the redraw is where a day or two disappears before anything is even scheduled.
- Logo in vector, plus a one-colour version for anywhere the full mark will not sit
- Exact print or stitch width in centimetres, not "medium"
- Position on the garment, described against a seam or a placket
- Any text that has to appear alongside the mark, spelled as it should read
What turns a first quote into the final number?
Quantity, decoration method and how many separate designs you are running. Each design needs its own 50 pieces, so two shirt versions for two departments are two orders rather than one split down the middle. The tiers on the pricing page start at 50 to 99 and run to 1,000 and over, with up to 35% off the 50-piece price at the top. Once the brief is answered, the way the numbers are laid out is covered in our guide to reading a wholesale quote, and the size question has its own post on splitting an office order.
Send the deadline last and make it a real date. Production runs 10 to 15 working days from approved artwork, and delivery transit to the UK, USA or Europe sits on top of that. A brief that names the day stock has to be on site lets a supplier tell you immediately whether the plan works, rather than finding out three weeks in.
