What Is the Lead Time for 500 Custom Team Bags in Season?

What Does Lead Time Actually Cover?

It covers three things that are usually quoted as one, and separating them is the whole trick. The first is sampling: 6-10 working days from a signed-off tech pack, extending to 12-15 working days where a new colour has to be matched or a new panel has to be developed. The second is bulk: 35-50 days from written sample approval. The third is freight, which is not production time at all and is quoted separately.

A club that hears "six weeks" and plans on six weeks has usually been quoted the bulk figure alone. A club that asks which two of the three that covers gets an answer it can put on a calendar. The distinction matters most in season, because in season the club is not planning a purchase — it is planning around fixtures that are already fixed.

When Does the Clock Start?

Not at the enquiry, and not at the deposit. Bulk production starts at written sample approval, and sampling starts at a signed-off tech pack. Those are two different documents, and the gap between them is where most of the slippage in a club calendar actually happens.

A tech pack is signed off when the club has named the fabric, the compartments, the dimensions, the colour references and the decoration. A sample is approved when the club has seen the physical bag and said so in writing. Between the two sits a round of physical development, and the round can be repeated. The first order of a programme usually takes one round; a programme with an unresolved crest or an unmatched colour can take two or three.

How Do You Build the Calendar Backwards From a Fixture Date?

Start with the date the bag has to be in a player's hands, then subtract in order. Freight first, because it is the item a club most often forgets. Bulk second, taking the top of the range rather than the bottom until the tech pack is settled. Inspection third, which sits inside the bulk window rather than after it. Sampling fourth. And then, because everything above assumes a clear run, check what the result sits against.

The arithmetic for a 500-piece first order with a new club colour runs as follows: 12-15 working days of sampling, then 35-50 days of bulk, then freight. Call it three weeks of sampling, seven weeks of bulk and two to five weeks on the water, and a club is looking at roughly twelve to fifteen weeks from a signed-off tech pack to a bag in hand. A repeat order with the colour already matched takes the sampling figure down to 6-10 working days and removes a week and a half.

• Fix the fixture date first, and write it down before any other figure.
• Subtract freight, using the lane the club actually uses.
• Subtract 50 days, not 35, until the tech pack is stable.
• Subtract the sampling window, at 12-15 working days if any colour is new.
• Subtract two weeks for the club's own decision time, which is never zero.
• Read the resulting start date and ask whether it sits inside a shutdown.

What Is the Spring Festival Shutdown, and How Long Does It Really Last?

Spring Festival is the Lunar New Year, and it falls between late January and mid-February, moving every year. The public holiday itself is about a week. That is not the number a club should plan with.

The number a club should plan with is the effective closure, which is considerably longer. Production lines begin to wind down one to two weeks before the holiday, as workers travel home, and they do not run at full strength for one to two weeks after it, as workers return. A club planning against the public holiday alone will place an order that looks comfortable and lands inside a window in which nothing is being made.

There is a second effect that catches clubs out, and it runs before the shutdown rather than during it. The weeks immediately before Spring Festival are the busiest of the year for export bookings out of Fujian. Freight space tightens and sailings roll. A lot that was finished on time can still miss its vessel, and it is then held over the holiday rather than shipped.

Which Other Shutdowns Hit a Team Bag Calendar?

Three more, none of them as severe. The National Day holiday in early October closes about a week and produces a smaller version of the same effect: a wind-down before, a ramp-up after, and tight bookings in the weeks preceding it. The Labour Day holiday at the start of May closes a few days.

The third is not a holiday at all. Late summer and early autumn is the peak export season for the northern hemisphere's own peak, and lines are at their fullest from roughly August to October. A 500-piece order booked in that window takes its place in a queue. It still runs inside 35-50 days, but the queue is the reason a club should book rather than hope.

Fujian also has a typhoon season, running roughly July to September, and a port closure of two or three days is a normal event in that window rather than an exceptional one. It is worth a line in the plan and not worth a contingency of its own.

What Happens If an Order Lands Just Before the Shutdown?

One of three things, and the club should know which before it commits. If the tech pack is signed off with enough of the sampling window left, the sample is made and approved before the wind-down, and bulk starts when the lines come back. That is the good outcome, and it costs the club the shutdown period and nothing else.

If the sample is made but not approved, the club holds a physical bag over the holiday and approves it on the far side. That is also a reasonable outcome, and it is the one a club should aim for when a decision is running late: get the sample into someone's hands before the holiday, even if the written approval follows.

The third outcome is the one to avoid. If the tech pack is signed off too late for sampling to finish, nothing physical exists over the holiday, and the whole sequence — sampling, approval, bulk — starts after it. The club loses the shutdown period and the sampling window both, and a delivery planned for March becomes one that lands in May.

How Does Freight Change the Answer?

Substantially, and more than most clubs allow for. Production is quoted FOB Xiamen, which means the lot is delivered to the vessel. What happens after that is the club's own arrangement, and the duration depends on the lane, the carrier and the season.

The seasonal part is the one that matters here. Freight into Europe and North America tightens in the run-up to both Spring Festival and the autumn peak, and a booking made late in those windows either costs more or rolls to a later sailing. A club working to a fixed fixture date should treat the booking as part of the calendar rather than as an afterthought that follows a finished lot.

One more item belongs in the freight line: the packing. Cartons are specified to survive the transit they are about to take, and ISTA publishes transit test procedures for packed products. A club that ships a season's kit once has less to worry about here than a club that ships monthly, but both should know the carton specification was considered rather than assumed.

The Incoterm decision is worth settling early, because it decides who carries the booking risk. FOB, CIF or DDP sets out what changes between them, and the landed cost tool turns the choice into a figure per unit.

Does 500 Pieces Take Longer Than a Smaller Quantity?

Not in production days. A 500-piece order sits inside the same 35-50 day bulk window as a much larger one, because the window is set by the fabric, the decoration and the line setup rather than by the piece count. MOQ 500 pcs per style and colourway is the floor at which a club colour and a club crest are worth setting a line up for; 300 pcs is open to discussion on a repeat, where the setup already exists.

What quantity does change is where the order sits in the queue, and therefore how early the club has to book. A programme running seven production lines at 200,000 pcs a month has real capacity, but capacity in a given week is finite. In the autumn peak, two clubs wanting the same week means one of them takes the following week. Booking early is what converts a delivery date from an estimate into a commitment.

How Much Shorter Is a Repeat Order?

About a week and a half, and more than that in practice. Sampling on a repeat runs 6-10 working days rather than 12-15, because the colour is already matched, the pattern already exists and the decoration file is already made. There is no new reference set to agree.

More important than the saved days is the saved risk. A first order carries the risk that the colour comes back wrong, the crest comes back wrong, or both, and each of those means another sampling round. A repeat carries none of that, provided the reference set was retained. That is the practical argument for keeping coupons: it is not tidiness, it is what makes the second order predictable. The full argument is set out in Reorder consistency.

How Should a Multi-Squad Club Phase Its Deliveries?

A club with several age groups rarely needs every bag on the same day, and saying so at the enquiry is one of the most useful things it can do. Two deliveries a month apart spread the same total quantity across two windows, which takes pressure off the queue and gives the club a chance to correct anything the first delivery reveals.

The phasing has to be declared at the enquiry rather than negotiated later, because the production plan is built around it. A club that asks for 500 and then asks for 250 now and 250 later has changed the plan after it was made, and the second 250 will be treated as a repeat with its own window.

What Are the Four Ordering Points on a Club Calendar?

Every in-season programme has the same four, and they are worth writing into the club's own planning document rather than leaving to memory. The end-of-season review, at which the next season's quantity is estimated. The pre-season decision, at which the tech pack is signed off. The sample approval, which starts bulk. And the booking, which should be made before the lot is finished rather than after.

Where Does Inspection Sit in the Calendar?

Inside the bulk window, not after it. Inspection at AQL 2.5 under ISO 2859-1, General Inspection Level II, is carried out on the finished lot before release, and the sample size and the accept and reject numbers come off the lot size. The sampling table gives both.

The reason to say this in a lead-time piece is that clubs sometimes plan inspection as a stage that follows production and adds to it. It does not, provided the criteria were agreed before the lot was made. Where it does add time is when a lot fails and has to be reworked, and the rework is the real schedule risk in a season with a fixed date. Clear criteria, agreed in writing before bulk, are what keep that risk small.

AQL 1.5 versus 2.5 sets out what changes between the two levels and what each one costs a club in rework probability.

How Do You Protect a Date When a Decision Runs Late?

Three moves, in order of how much they help. The first is to sign off the tech pack with the colour unspecified and match the colour during sampling, which keeps the sampling window open and removes the longest single item from the critical path. It costs a club one decision and saves the most time.

The second is to approve a sample conditionally — approving the construction and holding only the colour, so bulk can be booked against a construction that is settled. The third is to accept a split delivery and take the first squad's bags on the original date. All three are better than the default, which is to wait for everything to be settled before anything is booked.

What Should the Order Say About the Date?

It should say a date, and it should say what counts from what. Bulk counted from written sample approval, sampling counted from a signed-off tech pack, and delivery quoted FOB Xiamen on T/T 30/70. When those three appear on the order, a club can calculate its own calendar and check the supplier's arithmetic against it.

This is the whole basis on which we run programmes. We do not promise the fastest 20 days. We promise a delivery date you can calculate — one built out of named stages, each with a trigger, so a club can see where the time goes and what moves it. A date that cannot be calculated is not a commitment; it is a hope with a number attached.

The window itself, and what sets its two ends, is set out in Why 35 to 50 days.

What Is the Honest Answer?

For 500 custom team bags ordered in season, plan on twelve to fifteen weeks from a signed-off tech pack to bags in a player's hands, and plan on three months if the calendar touches Spring Festival. A repeat with the colour already matched takes about a week and a half off that, mostly out of sampling.

The single thing that moves the date most is not the quantity, the fabric or the decoration. It is how early the tech pack is signed off, because that is the one input a club controls entirely on its own side of the line.

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