Bulk Jackets & Outerwear for Offices: A Buyer's Guide
By The Velocity Wear Team
Office outerwear is an onboarding item more than a uniform. It has to look like the brand, fit people who have never been measured, and still be orderable in eighteen months when the same jacket is needed for a new intake. Jackets are quoted per job, and every design carries the fifty-piece minimum.
What belongs in an onboarding jacket?
Something a new starter would wear outside work. That rules out anything loudly branded and points at a softshell with a small embroidered chest logo, in a neutral shade rather than the brand colour. Puffers work as a winter starter gift; coach jackets suit younger teams and marketing-facing roles. Varsity reads as merch and belongs in a swag box rather than a welcome pack.
Building a corporate apparel programme covers what else sits in the same pack and how to keep that list short enough to manage.
How do you keep sizing consistent across intakes?
Publish measurements rather than letters, and keep the same garment across intakes so those measurements stay true. The practical trap is a company that orders a different shell every year and then wonders why the size data it collected is useless. One shell, ordered repeatedly, lets you build a size curve out of what people actually asked for.
Fifty pieces of one design, sizes mixed freely, usually covers a year or two of starters for a mid-sized office. Hold the stock centrally and issue from it, which is cheaper than a fresh fifty every time headcount moves. Corporate clothing for small firms works through the same maths at a smaller scale, and the corporate page lists what else pairs with it.
Should the branding be embroidered or printed?
Embroidery, in almost every office case. It reads as considered, it survives the life of the shell, and it handles a small chest mark better than any print method. Printing wins when the logo has a gradient or fine detail that thread cannot hold, and DTF is the method for that on a technical face. Keep the mark small: a 70mm chest logo says uniform, a 250mm back print says event crew.
The wholesale jackets page sets out which shells take which decoration method.
What does the order cost and how long does it take?
Outerwear is quoted per job, because a lined puffer and an unlined coach jacket are not comparable garments. What is fixed is the shape of the pricing: fifty pieces minimum, tiers at 50–99, 100–249, 250–499, 500–999 and 1,000+, and up to 35% off the fifty-piece price as you move up them. Making time is 10–15 working days from artwork approval, with delivery to the UK, USA or Europe on top and invoicing available in seven currencies.
How do you stop a jacket becoming dead stock?
By issuing it rather than shipping it. Companies that post a jacket to every new starter without asking end up with a cupboard of the wrong sizes and a few people wearing something they did not want. Ask at onboarding, take the size, and issue from stock. The unordered ones stay available for the next intake.
The second safeguard is a design that does not date. Leave the year, the office location and any campaign wording off the shell, and keep the mark to the logo alone. A neutral jacket ordered in 2026 is still issuable two years later; one carrying a strapline the company has since dropped is not.
Record what has been issued and what remains, in whatever the HR system already is. A stock count that lives in one person's head disappears when that person does.
