Choosing a Wholesale tracksuit Supplier
By The Velocity Wear Team
Compare tracksuit suppliers on four things: the minimum, what the per-set price includes, when the lead time starts, and whether the top and jogger are cut from the same fleece batch. Ours is fifty sets from $53 a set, built in 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval. A number offered without those four around it is not yet a quote.
Which questions separate two suppliers?
- Is the minimum counted in sets or in pieces? Fifty sets is a hundred garments, and a hundred-piece minimum elsewhere might mean fifty sets or might mean twenty-five.
- Are the top and the jogger cut from the same fleece and the same dye lot?
- Does the price include decoration, labels and bagging, or do those arrive later as extras?
- When does the lead time start, and what does it exclude?
- What happens if a size run turns up wrong?
The second question is the one buyers almost never ask, and it is the one that ruins co-ords. Greys from two different batches read as two different colours under shop lighting. We cut both halves from a single batch for exactly that reason, which is set out on our tracksuit manufacturing page.
Why do two quotes for the same job look nothing alike?
Usually because they are drawn at different quantities with different things folded in. A set price at five hundred cannot be compared with a set price at fifty, and with up to 35% coming off across the bands the spread between the two ends of one range is wide. Ask everyone to quote the same quantity and the same decoration, then read the volume bands to see where you are actually buying.
Check what sits outside the number as well. Screens, digitising a logo for embroidery, labels, tags, bagging and delivery can all live beyond a headline figure. A quote that starts low and then grows three times before the invoice is not good value, it is incomplete.
Ask what happens when something goes wrong, as well. A supplier who can describe how they handle a colour that comes back off reference, or a size run that was keyed in incorrectly, has plainly dealt with both before. Vague reassurance on that question is the least reassuring answer available.
How do you test a supplier before committing?
Order a sample. Ours is £150 and the fee is credited against a bulk order, so going ahead makes it cost nothing in the end. What you learn from it is not really the print. It is whether the fleece feels like the description, whether the jogger taper matches the photography, and whether the two halves agree in daylight.
Treat the sample process as a test of the supplier as much as the garment. How fast the artwork came back, whether anybody flagged a problem with your file before printing it, and whether the sample matches what was agreed all tell you more than a website does. Questions worth asking a manufacturer carries a longer list.
What should make you walk away?
A supplier who will not name a minimum. A lead time given in days without saying which day it starts. A refusal to put the decoration method in writing. Add anyone promising a turnaround that leaves no room for artwork approval, because the build alone is 10 to 15 working days and transit follows it, as delivery times for wholesale tracksuits sets out.
The last warning sign is quieter. If nobody asks what the sets are for, the quote is being written blind. A club squad, a retail drop and a staff kit order want different weights and different finishing, and a supplier who never asks will build whatever is easiest to build.
