Sampling Joggers Before a Bulk Order
By The Velocity Wear Team
A jogger sample costs £150 and that fee is credited against the bulk order that follows, so on a fifty-piece run it is effectively an advance rather than an extra cost. There is always a charge for a sample. What you are buying is a fortnight of certainty about fit, fabric weight, print position and colour before you commit to a full production run.
What can a sample tell you that a mockup cannot?
Weight, for a start. A render cannot convey whether a fabric feels substantial or thin, and that single quality decides how a garment is received more than any graphic on it. Then drape: how the leg falls, whether the taper reads as intended, how the cuff sits on an ankle rather than on a flat image.
Then colour on fabric. The same ink reference looks different on black brushed fleece than on grey marl loopback, and no screen reproduces that accurately. A digital mockup is an excellent tool for agreeing position and scale and a poor tool for everything else, a point made at length in AI mockups versus physical samples.
What should you actually test?
Wear it for a full day, and get somebody who is not you to wear it too. Sit in it, crouch in it, put a phone in the pocket. Then wash it the way it will really be washed and measure it before and after, because shrinkage is the thing buyers discover after the run and never before.
Check the decoration under tension. Stretch the printed area gently and see whether the ink moves with the fabric or sits on it like a plate. Look at the mark while somebody is standing, not while the garment is laid flat, because a thigh print that looked centred on the table can sit too far back on a leg. Position options are described on the wholesale joggers page.
How does sampling fit into the calendar?
Before approval, always. Sampling after you have approved artwork tells you what you have committed to rather than what you should commit to. Give the sample its own slot in the plan, along with time to live with it, and set the bulk approval date after that slot rather than around it.
For an urgent job, decide honestly whether a sample or a delivery date matters more. On a garment the whole team will wear for two years, the sample wins. On a one-off giveaway with a fixed event date, a digital proof plus a familiar fabric spec is often the sensible compromise. Timing is covered in how long bulk joggers take to make.
When is a sample not worth it?
When you have ordered the same construction before and nothing but the artwork has changed. The garment is known, the fabric is known, and a digital proof answers the only open question. Ordering a sample to confirm something you already own is spending time you could spend on the approval.
Everywhere else, sample. First order with any supplier. New fabric or weight. A fit you have not worn. A critical brand colour. A design with fine detail that might fill in. In each of those cases the £150, credited back against whichever tier on the pricing page you order at, is sound insurance against fifty pieces of a garment nobody wants to wear. Fabric choices worth testing are set out in choosing fabric for wholesale joggers.
