Summary
Production timeline is the number buyers ask about, but transit and customs decide whether kit lands before the season. This guide covers the three ways an order can move, what DDP transfers that standard terms do not, the documents a shipment needs, what drives landed cost, and how to plan backwards from your first match date.
Why the delivery date decides your season, not the production date
A finished order is not a delivered order. Between the two sit a freight booking, a customs entry and a local delivery — and any one of them can add a week nobody budgeted for.
Production lead time gets quoted, tracked and chased; transit gets treated as a formality. Then a shipment sits in a clearance queue, or misses a vessel because a carton list arrived late, and the season opens in last year's kit.
The fix is simple: treat transit and clearance as part of the critical path from the day you order.
The three ways an order can move
There is no single best freight method — only the method that fits your weight, your deadline and your budget. We ship worldwide by express courier, air freight or sea freight, and the right answer depends on which constraint is tightest.
Express courier
Express is the fastest door-to-door option, and the one that suits samples, small top-ups and late registrations. We normally ship by UPS or DHL, typically 5–10 days. The trade-off is cost per kilo: efficient for a carton, expensive for a pallet.
Air freight
Air freight sits between express and sea on both cost and speed. It suits a mid-size order with a hard deadline that cannot wait for a vessel, and it is the right compromise when a deadline is real but the premium is still justified.
Sea freight
Sea freight is the most economical option for full team or bulk orders, and the standard choice for a full season's kit. It takes longer than air and varies by route, so transit has to be confirmed against your destination rather than assumed. Large orders can be shipped as full container loads.
One note applies to all three: transit times are confirmed per order and against your destination, not pulled from a generic table. If a date matters, ask for it in writing on the quotation.
Who is responsible for duty and tax: standard terms versus DDP
Import duties and taxes are the line item buyers most often overlook, because they are paid at the far end of the journey by someone who may not be you.
Under standard terms, import duties and taxes are paid by the buyer, and we provide the commercial invoice and the export documents you need for clearance. It works well when you have a broker or forwarder handling your imports.
DDP — delivered duty paid — works the other way. It is available on request, and it means we quote a door-to-door price with duties and taxes included. For buyers without an import process, DDP removes the two things that cause most delivery surprises: an unexpected clearance invoice, and a goods hold while paperwork is sorted. Where DDP is quoted, duties are assessed per product on your written quotation, so the number is visible before you commit.
Neither arrangement is better in the abstract. What matters is knowing which one you are buying before the goods ship, because the difference is not a rounding error — it is a second invoice. Our full terms are on the shipping policy page.
The documents that travel with a shipment
Customs does not clear garments. It clears paperwork. Three documents do most of the work:
- The commercial invoice — states what the goods are, what they are worth and who is buying them. A vague description is the most common cause of a clearance delay.
- The packing list — states how many cartons, and what is in each. It is also what lets you count your delivery per size rather than per carton.
- The export documents — the paperwork that lets the shipment leave origin cleanly, which we prepare.
Get these right at the point of order and clearance is routine. Get them wrong and the shipment waits while someone in another timezone looks for an answer.
What actually drives your landed cost
Landed cost is the number that matters, and it is not the freight quote. Five things move it:
- Chargeable weight — freight is priced on weight and volume, whichever is greater, so a light but bulky order can cost more to move than its weight suggests.
- Mode — express, air and sea sit on very different cost curves, and the gap widens with volume.
- Duty and tax treatment — standard terms or DDP, and how the goods are classified.
- Destination delivery — port-to-door is not port-to-port, and the local leg is where the last surprises live.
- Timing — rush freight costs more than planned freight, and the premium rises as the deadline tightens.
Ask for the cost of the whole journey, not the cost of the flight. A cheaper option that arrives after your first fixture is not cheaper.
Consolidation: how reorders and late registrations travel
Top-up orders are the quiet cost centre of teamwear. A dozen extra jerseys, a late registration, a replacement for a sizing swap — each is small, and shipping each on its own is expensive.
Top-up orders can be consolidated with other orders: combined into a shared container and shipped together. That is the practical argument for batching small additions to a known date rather than sending them one at a time.
Planning backwards from your season date
The reliable way to set a delivery date is to work backwards from the day you need the kit, and then add buffer:
- Start with your first fixture or kit-issue date.
- Add the local delivery leg after clearance.
- Add customs clearance time at destination.
- Add transit for your chosen mode.
- Add bulk production — 10–15 working days after the deposit is received and the design is approved.
- Add approval time — a digital sample takes 3–5 days and a physical sample about 7 days to make, if you choose to see one.
What is left is your order date. For school programmes and larger seasonal orders, planning three to four months ahead of the season is the realistic window. The full sequence is on the how custom orders work page, and the production clocks are listed in the FAQ alongside MOQ and payment terms.
A buyer's checklist before you confirm shipping
- Is the freight mode chosen against a dated deadline, not on price alone?
- Has the transit time been confirmed for your destination and written on the quotation?
- Do you know whether you are buying on standard terms or DDP — and who pays duty?
- Is the commercial invoice description specific enough to clear without questions?
- Is the packing list accurate and per size, so the delivery can be checked on arrival?
- Have you asked for the whole-journey cost, not just the freight quote?
- Are top-ups and late registrations planned into a consolidation date rather than shipped ad hoc?
- Does your schedule include buffer between delivery and the date you need the kit on the field?
The bottom line
A custom teamwear order arrives when three things have been decided properly: the mode, the duty arrangement and the documents. Choose the mode against a real date rather than a rate, settle who pays duty before the goods move, and get the invoice and packing list right the first time — and delivery stops being the part of the order that surprises you.
Send us your requirements, quantity and season date through the quote form and we will come back with a price structure, a shipping plan and a sampling plan — normally within 24 hours, with no design files needed yet.