Editor’s note — not for publication. Lead-time ranges below are written as industry ranges, in the same hedged style as the Letterman’s Jacket post. Swap in The RUN’s actual production windows before this goes live. Same for the two places marked with brackets.
The Gear Calendar: What to Order Before the First Game
The order that shows up late is almost never the order somebody forgot. It’s the order that got placed the week somebody finally had time to place it.
That’s the whole problem in one sentence. Gear doesn’t run late because a factory is slow. It runs late because the decisions in front of the factory — sizes, artwork, approvals, who’s actually on the roster — took six weeks that nobody budgeted for. The production window is the part you can look up. The part before it is the part that sinks you.
So here’s the calendar. Not the fundraising calendar — the ordering one.
Manufacturing is rarely the bottleneck
Ask a coach why the warm-ups didn’t arrive and you’ll hear “the vendor was backed up.” Sometimes that’s true. Far more often the timeline looked like this: three weeks waiting on a final roster, two weeks of artwork revisions, one week waiting for an athletic director to approve the school mark, and then a production run that hit its quoted window exactly.
Industry decoration lead times vary by method and by season. Screen printing and embroidery on stock goods typically move fastest; cut-and-sew uniforms, sublimated kits, and jackets sit at the long end, and every provider’s calendar tightens between July and September because every program in the country is ordering at once. [Insert The RUN’s current windows here.]
Treat the quoted production window as the last leg of the trip, not the trip.
Work backward from three dates, not one
Most programs plan around the first game. That’s one deadline out of three, and it’s the one that causes the least damage when you miss it.
First game. Uniforms, warm-ups, sideline gear. Non-negotiable — you cannot play in a jersey that hasn’t arrived.
Mid-season. Replacements, reorders, the kid who joined in week three, the size that came in wrong. Nobody plans for this and every program needs it.
Banquet and postseason. Jackets, championship gear, senior keepsakes. This one gets planned in October and it should have been planned in August.
Put all three on a wall in front of you and count backward from each.
The calendar
12 weeks out — decisions, not orders. Lock the roster you’re ordering for, even knowing it’ll shift. Collect sizes. Get the artwork to a final file. Confirm in writing that you’re allowed to use the school’s mark. Almost nothing here costs money, and it’s where the entire timeline is won or lost.
10 weeks out — custom uniforms and anything cut-and-sew. The longest lead times in the category. If you’re ordering sublimated kits or custom jackets, this is the week.
8 weeks out — warm-ups, sideline, bags, headwear. Decorated stock goods. Faster than uniforms, but they stack in the same production queue during August.
6 weeks out — the spirit wear pre-sale opens. Two-week window, hard close, then straight to production. (We wrote about how to run one of these; the short version is fewer items, real deadline, take the money before you produce.)
4 weeks out — the sample fitting. Order one of each key size and put them on actual athletes. Sizing charts describe garments. They do not describe fourteen-year-olds.
2 weeks out — reorder buffer. Whatever came in wrong, whoever joined late. If you didn’t leave room for this you’ll pay rush fees for it.
In season — championship gear, decided in advance. Don’t design it during a playoff run. Pick the design in September, sit on the file, and print only if you need it.
Five things that blow up a timeline
1. Sizes collected at the last minute. Sizing is the single most common delay in team gear and the easiest to fix. Collect it the same week you collect physical forms, before anyone is thinking about apparel.
2. Artwork with no owner. “The design is almost done” can last a month. Name one person who approves the file, give them a date, and send the file — not a description of the file.
3. Licensing, discovered late. Schools and districts license their marks. A booster club or coach printing an unauthorized logo creates a real headache for the athletic director. Ask first; it’s usually a form, and it’s usually fast if you’re not asking on a Friday in August.
4. One more item. Somebody suggests adding a long-sleeve. Now there’s a new size run, a new artwork placement, a new approval, and a new production line. Add items in the next order, not this one.
5. No sample. Ordering ninety pieces off a chart and discovering the cut runs small is a mistake you cannot undo. One sample round costs a week. Re-ordering costs a season.
If you’re reading this in August
Fall sports are starting now, which means the honest answer for some of this is that you’re already inside the window. That’s fine — it just changes what you do:
- Anything custom for the first game: order this week or plan to play the opener in last year’s gear. Both are survivable. Only one is a surprise.
- Spirit wear: you’re right on time. August and September are the highest-energy weeks of the school year and the best selling window you’ll get.
- Letterman jackets and banquet items: you are exactly at the right moment to start, and almost nobody does. Start now and November is easy.
- Championship gear: decide the design this month. Print it later, or never.
The short version
Manufacturing time is the part you can look up. Budget for the part you can’t — rosters, sizes, artwork, approvals — and it’s usually six weeks longer than you think. Count backward from three dates, not one. Get a sample on a real athlete before you order ninety. And if it’s August, the thing to start today is the thing you need in November.
RUN Journal — Where Sport, Culture, and the Business of Sport Meet.
Outfitting a program this season? We handle team gear end to end — design, sizing, production, and delivery — and we’ll tell you honestly what still fits in the calendar. Request a quote or call 817.668.2600.
