Wholesale Denim Jackets for Trades
By The Velocity Wear Team
Denim jackets are $38 a piece from a run of fifty and they earn a place in a trades wardrobe as a mid layer and a travel jacket, not as site PPE. Denim takes abrasion better than almost anything else you can brand, but it is not high visibility and it is not waterproof, so it sits alongside the compliant kit rather than replacing it.
Why choose denim over a softshell on site?
Toughness and cost per year of wear. A denim jacket shrugs off scuffs from timber, brick and tool belts that would mark a technical shell, and it can be washed hot without losing a membrane it never had. It is also the garment a crew will keep wearing off site, which quietly does more for a firm name than a jacket left in a van. What it cannot do is keep water out or meet a visibility requirement, so the sensible specification is denim for the drive, the yard and the mid layer, with compliant outerwear over the top, which is the layering approach set out in construction workwear specification. The garments are listed on our denim jackets page and the trades context on the construction and trades page.
Where does branding go on a jacket worn under hi-vis?
On the chest, high, and on the back between the shoulders. Both positions disappear under a hi-vis vest, which is fine, because the denim is being worn when the vest is off. Do not spend money on a sleeve mark that a jacket sleeve rubs away and nobody sees. Keep the logo in a thread colour with real contrast against the indigo, since a navy thread on a dark jacket is invisible at any useful distance. The same visibility thinking applied to the compliant layers is covered in branding hi-vis, fleeces and polos.
How does rigid denim behave after a few weeks?
It softens and it marks where the wearer bends. Rigid denim skips the wash process entirely, so it starts dark and stiff and develops its own fade lines at the elbows, cuffs and chest over a couple of months. On a site crew that produces a set of jackets that all look slightly different within a season, which some firms like and others do not. If you want fifty jackets that still look like a set at Christmas, order washed denim instead: it arrives soft with the fading already built in and changes very little afterwards.
What should a trades order actually include?
Fifty pieces per design, weighted heavily towards large and extra large, with the extremes ordered to named demand rather than to a percentage. Add a handful of spares for the starters you will take on before the next run. Embroidery on the chest, a patch or embroidered block on the back, and a woven neck label if the jackets are being issued as branded kit. Production is 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, a sample is £150 and comes off the bulk invoice, and the per-piece price falls by up to 35% against the fifty-piece rate at the largest tier.
Issue the jackets by name and record it. Site kit walks, and a firm that hands out fifty branded jackets without a signature sheet will be ordering again within the year without ever understanding why. One sheet listing the name, the size and the date takes ten minutes at handover and gives you a real replacement rate afterwards. That number turns the next order from a guess into a calculation, and it settles the question of whether the kit budget is doing anything useful.
