Choosing a Wholesale Cap Supplier
By The Velocity Wear Team
Before you send artwork, get four things in writing from any cap supplier: the minimum per design, the lead time and what starts it, the blank specification, and what the quoted price excludes. Ours are fifty pieces, 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, a stated crown and closure, and a from-price of $12 at fifty. A supplier who is vague on any of the four is telling you something.
What should you ask before you send artwork?
- Is the minimum counted per design or per order, and does a colour change start a new one?
- Does the lead time run from the order, from payment, or from artwork approval?
- What exactly is the blank: five or six panel, structured or unstructured, which closure, which fabric?
- Is decoration priced by stitch count, by colour count, or bundled into the piece price?
- What does the quote exclude — freight, duties, tags, bagging, samples?
The answers matter more than the headline number. A quote that looks lower because it omits freight and assumes a thinner blank is not a lower quote. Questions worth asking a manufacturer has the longer version of this list.
How do you compare two quotes that look different?
Normalise them before you compare. Put both on the same quantity, the same crown structure and closure, the same decoration method and the same number of positions. Then add freight to both and any tags, labels or bagging that only one of them included. What is left is comparable. Very often the gap closes to almost nothing, and the decision reverts to lead time, communication and whether the supplier told you the awkward things without being asked.
What does a good supplier tell you without being asked?
That your logo has 4mm type that will not hold in thread. That a circular badge on a six panel will straddle the seam. That the navy you want will not match a garment dyed in a different fibre. That a dye lot on a reorder may read slightly differently. None of those are comfortable things to raise during a sale, and all of them surface later if nobody does. A supplier who raises them before production has already saved you the version of the order where you find out on delivery.
What are the warning signs?
A price with no stated minimum. A turnaround claim that does not say what it is counted from. A sample policy that shifts every time you push on it — ours is £150, credited against the bulk order, which is at least legible. Vague blank descriptions, so you cannot tell what you are buying. And no willingness to produce a physical sample at all, which is the clearest signal of the lot. The full headwear range sits on wholesale caps, tier pricing on pricing, and the sampling process in sampling caps before a bulk order.
How much does communication actually matter?
More than the quote, once the gap between quotes is small. A cap order has perhaps four moments where a fast, clear answer changes the outcome: when the artwork raises a question, when the proof comes back, when the sample lands, and if anything goes wrong in transit. A supplier who replies within a day at all four is worth a few per cent on the unit price, because the alternative is a week lost waiting on an email while a fixed date gets closer. Test it before you commit. Send a question during the quoting stage that requires a real answer — how the mark will handle the centre seam, say — and see whether what comes back is specific or generic. The reply you get before you are a customer is the best version you will ever get, so treat a vague one as the ceiling rather than a bad day.
