Wholesale Tracksuits for Agencies
By The Velocity Wear Team
An agency buying tracksuits is usually buying twice over: once against a client brand guideline and once against a campaign date. Sets start at $53 at the minimum of 50, covering the hooded top and the jogger that matches it. The two things worth nailing before anything else are the colour reference and the artwork format.
How close can a garment get to a brand colour?
Close, but a dyed fabric is not a coated paper stock and it will never be a perfect match to a swatch book. Different fibres take dye differently, so the same reference on a fleece body and a printed panel can read as two shades. Set that expectation with the client before the sample lands. Colour matching: why your Pantone never looks quite right is a useful thing to forward at the start rather than at the end.
Where a colour genuinely cannot move, a sample is the right step. At £150, credited against the bulk order, it is cheaper than the conversation that happens after fifty sets arrive in the wrong shade.
What artwork should the studio supply?
Vector wherever the mark exists as vector, with fonts outlined and the colour breakdown stated. Raster artwork needs to be at print size and resolution rather than lifted from a website. Decoration options are screen printing, DTF, embroidery, 3D puff and sublimation, and the file requirements differ between them; artwork setup for custom tracksuits covers what to send for each.
Agencies that send the final file first time get the whole 10-15 working day production window; agencies that send a placeholder lose a week to revisions before the clock even starts.
How do you protect the campaign date?
Treat artwork approval as the milestone in your project plan, not the order date, because production runs 10-15 working days from approval and then needs transit on top. Build client sign-off time in front of that, and a buffer behind it. Product detail lives on the wholesale tracksuits page, and the corporate page covers the wider kit an internal campaign usually needs.
If the campaign has multiple territories, order once and split the delivery. We deliver to the UK, the USA and Europe and invoice in seven currencies, which keeps the recharge to the client simple.
What should the quote request contain?
- 1Quantity, and whether it can flex upwards to reach the next tier of 50-99, 100-249, 250-499, 500-999 or 1,000 plus.
- 2One design and one colourway per fifty, with any second colourway costed separately.
- 3The decoration method, or a request for a recommendation based on the artwork.
- 4Any labelling: woven neck labels, tear-out labels, swing tags or packaging.
- 5The date the kit has to be in the client's hands, not the date it ships.
Send those five together and the quote comes back as a number the client can approve rather than a set of questions.
How do the sets reach the people they are for?
Campaign kit usually has to reach a list rather than a building. Decide early whether the boxes land with the agency for fulfilment, with the client for internal distribution, or need to be individually bagged for onward posting, because that changes the packaging specification rather than the garment.
Collecting sizes and addresses is the slow part, and it is slower than any agency plans for. Run that form in parallel with artwork approval instead of after it, or the kit will be ready a fortnight before you know where it is going.
Build a small surplus into the run for the recipients who give the wrong size and the ones who get added late. Reprinting the same design later is a fresh order of fifty, which is a difficult line to put in front of a client twice.
