Bulk Denim Jackets for Retailers: A Buyer's Guide
By The Velocity Wear Team
Retailers buying denim jackets start at $38 a piece over fifty units, and that figure falls as quantity rises through the tiers, by as much as 35% at the top. The margin question is settled before you buy: know your landed cost including duty and freight, then set the shelf price against it. A first buy should be small, wide on the middle sizes and narrow at the ends.
What margin does a fifty-piece buy leave?
Start from the landed figure, not the quoted one. The per-piece price covers the garment and the decoration; freight, duty into your market and any private label work sit on top, and they are what separate a comfortable margin from a thin one. Denim carries well at retail because the customer expects to pay more for it than for a tee, so the absolute margin per unit is healthy even at a conventional multiple. The lever most retailers underuse is quantity. Moving from the fifty-piece tier into the higher bands changes the per-piece cost materially, and the tier structure is set out on our pricing page alongside the rest of the wholesale range. Specification and from-prices sit on the denim jackets page, and the detailed cost breakdown is in our post on what denim jackets cost.
Which size curve should a first buy follow?
Weight the middle heavily. On a fifty-piece run, something close to four small, twelve medium, sixteen large, twelve extra large and six double extra large will clear more cleanly than an even split, and you can adjust from your own sales history once you have one. Denim is less forgiving than jersey, so the curve matters more than it would on a hoodie: a jacket that is a size out does not simply look loose, it looks wrong across the shoulder. The general principles behind size runs and how they affect returns are covered in our sizing and fit guide.
How often should a denim line be restocked?
Watch the size that sells out first, not the total. When large is gone and small is untouched, the line is working and the curve was wrong, and the restock fixes the curve rather than repeating it. Build the ten to fifteen working day production window plus transit into your reorder point, because a jacket that sells through in November and arrives in January has missed its season. Keep in mind that denim wash lots vary between runs, so a restock arriving beside original stock may read slightly different on the rail. If that matters to your display, sell the two runs as separate deliveries rather than mixing them on one rail.
Does private labelling change the retail story?
It changes what the customer believes they are buying. A custom woven neck label, a tear-out label and a printed swing tag turn a manufactured jacket into your own line, and at a denim price point customers check those details. The cost per unit is small against a $38 garment, and it is the difference between a branded jacket and a blank with a logo on it. Specify the labels at the same time as the garment, because adding them afterwards means a second run.
Think about how the jacket photographs, too, because a denim piece sold online lives or dies on the product shot. A washed denim reads accurately on a screen, while a very dark indigo tends to photograph flatter than it looks in person and loses the seam detail that justifies the price. If the line is going onto an ecommerce site, shoot it in daylight against a neutral ground and include a close crop of the stitching and the neck label. Those two shots do more to justify a denim price point than any amount of description underneath them.
