Delivery Times for Wholesale Caps
By The Velocity Wear Team
Delivery for wholesale caps runs on top of the 10 to 15 working day production window, not inside it. We deliver to the UK, USA and Europe. Transit varies with destination, consignment size and the method you choose, so the honest planning approach is to fix the arrival date you need, subtract transit, and treat the result as your artwork approval deadline.
How long after production does delivery take?
It depends on where the consignment is going and how it travels. Air freight is measured in days and costs more per kilo; sea freight is measured in weeks and costs far less. For caps the calculation is unusual because they are light for their volume: you tend to hit a volumetric limit before a weight limit, so a cap consignment is priced more on the space it occupies than on the scales. That works in your favour on small orders and against you on very large ones, where crushing is not an option.
What changes between the UK, USA and Europe?
Distance and paperwork, mostly. A UK delivery is the shortest hop. European destinations add customs formalities that vary by country and, more importantly, vary in how long they take in practice. USA deliveries are the longest leg and the one most worth booking with margin, because a delay there is measured in days rather than hours. Whichever destination, confirm the delivery address and any receiving restrictions at the point of order — a consignment that arrives at a site with no forklift or no goods-in window loses time for reasons that have nothing to do with shipping.
How are caps packed and what does that do to freight?
Caps are nested crown-in-crown and cartoned so they do not deform in transit. Structured six panels hold shape well; unstructured dad caps pack flatter and travel fine but want reshaping on arrival. If you have ordered individual polythene bagging for retail, that goes on in production and the cartons get slightly bulkier as a result. None of this changes the per-piece price on wholesale caps, but it does affect the freight line, which is quoted per job.
How do you plan around a fixed date?
Count backwards in four blocks: transit, then 15 working days of production, then a sample round if you want one, then your own approval time. That usually lands four to six weeks before the date. Build slack into the transit block rather than the production block, because production is the part with a stated window and shipping is the part with weather, ports and customs in it. How long bulk caps take to make covers the factory half, and building a shipping strategy for apparel is useful if you are then shipping onward to your own customers. Tier pricing is on pricing.
What should you check on arrival?
Open a carton before the delivery driver has been gone an hour, not the week you need the caps. Count the cartons against the paperwork, then take a handful of caps out from different boxes rather than all from the top of one. Compare them against your sample: mark position, thread colour, crown shape, closure. Check a few sweatbands and a few peaks. If something is wrong, you want to know while the consignment is fresh and while there is still time to act, and that means opening the box on the day. The most common genuine issue is not a fault at all but crushing in transit on unstructured caps, which usually resolves itself once they have been worn or reshaped. Give them a day out of the carton before deciding anything is wrong with them. Structured crowns recover almost immediately; unstructured ones want a little longer and, if they have travelled a long way, a hand inside the crown to push the shape back out.
