Restocking Branded Kit for Societies
By The Velocity Wear Team
A second run is worth it when you have at least 50 pieces of genuine demand, because that is the minimum per design on every order including repeats. Most societies reorder once a year rather than mid-term. The artwork, label spec and decoration setup carry over, so a repeat is a purchase order rather than a design project, and production still runs 10 to 15 working days from approval.
Is a second run worth it mid-year?
Only if the demand is real and paid for. A committee facing twenty requests in February has three options: sell from spare stock, hold the requests until the next annual order, or run a full 50 and carry the remainder into next year. The third is defensible if the society is growing and the design is not about to change. It is a poor idea in a final term, when the incoming committee may want something different. The student and leavers section covers the products that repeat well.
How does a committee keep artwork alive between years?
By storing it somewhere that is not a personal account. The single most common reason a society cannot repeat its own kit is that the vector file lived in the outgoing president email and went with them. Keep the artwork, the order reference and the specification in a shared drive that the union controls, and name the file after the garment rather than the year. We retain approved artwork on our side too, so a repeat can be matched to the original order even when the committee has changed entirely.
Will a repeat batch sit next to the first without looking off?
Largely yes, with one caveat worth stating to members before they ask. Garment dye lots vary slightly between production runs, so a hoodie from the autumn batch and one from the spring batch can differ a shade under bright light. Embroidery repeats more exactly because thread is referenced rather than mixed. If matching matters, keep one piece from the first run untouched and send it as a physical reference with the reorder. Our piece on reorder cadence covers how a repeat rhythm is built.
What should be handed over to next year committee?
A single page, printed and emailed: garment name and colour, decoration method and position, the size split ordered, the label specification, the order reference, the supplier contact, and a count of the leftover stock with sizes. That page turns a fortnight of rediscovery into an afternoon. Pair it with the sign-up data so the next curve improves, which is the point of our note on sizing a society order, and check the current product range in case a better base garment now exists.
If the next order is likely to be larger, look at the tiers first. Moving from 50 to 100 pieces changes the per-piece figure, and the steps continue at 250, 500 and 1,000 with up to 35 percent off the 50-piece price at the top.
Resist redesigning the kit every year unless there is a reason. A crest that stays put for three years builds recognition across a campus, lets successive batches sit together at events, and keeps old stock sellable instead of dated. Where a change is genuinely wanted, change the garment colour or the product rather than the mark, because the artwork is the expensive part to rebuild and the part carrying the society identity. A new colour is still a new design with its own 50 pieces, so make the change worth the commitment.
Log the reorder in the society accounts as a recurring item rather than a one-off. Kit bought every year is a budget line, and treating it as one means the incoming treasurer sees it coming rather than discovering it three weeks before freshers week begins.
