Who Approves a Company Apparel Order
One person approves a company apparel order, and it is whoever can accept a proof without asking anybody for permission. Everyone else advises. Four separate decisions feed that one signature: the garment, the mark, the money and the date. In most companies those four sit at four different desks, and none of those desks belongs to the person who was told to go get the shirts. So the approval process you are looking for is not a form and not a policy. It is a short list of names, one per decision, settled before you ask anyone for a price, and one of those names holding the authority to look at a proof and say yes on the spot.
The order needs one signature. The four decisions behind that signature belong to four people, and three of them probably do not report to you.
The decision
- The garment
- The mark
- The money
- The date
Whose desk it sits on
- Whoever manages the people who will wear it
- Whoever owns the brand
- Whoever owns the budget line the shirts come out of
- Whoever owns the event, the opening or the start date
Owner
Who signs off on branded apparel inside your company?
Whoever can accept a proof without asking permission. That is the whole test, and it is a test of authority rather than of title. A vice president who has to forward every image to legal is not the owner of this order. A field superintendent who can look at a stitched logo on a screen and write back approved is. Find that person first, because every number a decorator gives you keys off the day they reply.
An order with a name attached to it behaves differently from an order attached to a distribution list, and the difference shows up in the first week rather than the last. Naming the owner costs nothing and it is the cheapest decision on the project, whether the run is a single sales floor or every seat in the building. It applies the same way to a program built on one stock polo.
Desks
Which four decisions sit at four different desks?
The garment, the mark, the money and the date, and each one has a natural owner you can usually name in under a minute. Write the four names down. What follows is the ruling on each.
- The garment
- Owned by whoever manages the people who will wear it. The motion the job asks for decides the shirt. A crew reaching overhead all day and a sales team sitting in a car all day do not want the same thing, and the person who sees that motion every morning knows it better than anyone upstairs. The org chart does not pick the garment. The work does.
- The mark
- Owned by whoever owns the brand. A logo is not a decision until somebody with authority says this file, this size, this placement, this color. Until then it is a reference to a logo, and a reference cannot be stitched. Here is what the person who owns the brand has to hand over for the file to count as settled.
- The money
- Owned by whoever owns the budget line the shirts come out of, which is frequently not the department wearing them. Marketing often pays for what operations wears. Find the line before you ask for a price, because a quote sent to someone with no line to spend it from is a quote that sits.
- The date
- Owned by whoever owns the event, the opening or the start date. That person usually set the date before anyone told them a production clock existed, which is not their fault and is still your problem. The date is a decision someone already made. Treat it as an input, not as a negotiation.
Garment
Whose desk does the garment decision sit on?
The desk of whoever manages the wearers. Hand that person the question in the form they can answer, which is what the job physically asks the body to do, not which of four fabrics they prefer. They will tell you about the reaching, the kneeling, the heat in August and the one guy who will not wear a collar. That is the brief. How many of each size to buy is a separate question that belongs to the same desk, and it gets answered in our piece on sizing a company polo order.
$76
The solid staple. Four way stretch for wearers who move all day, and a firm collar so the shirt still reads as finished in a lobby. Embroidered with your logo once the brand owner settles the file.
- 84 percent nylon, 16 percent spandex
- Four way stretch, sweat wicking
- Classic athletic fit, firm collar
- U cut hem, pre shrunk
Mark
Who gets to say this file, this size, this placement?
Whoever owns the brand, and nobody else. That person may be a marketing director, a founder or a one person communications team, but somebody holds it and that somebody has to put four answers in writing: which file, at what size, in what position on the garment, in which color. A logo everyone recognizes is still not a decision. Note also that deciding the mark and keeping the records afterward are two different desks, and we handle the second one in our piece on the files that outlive a single order.
$76
The same staple in black. Same fabric, same fit, same collar, and a ground that takes a one color mark without any argument about contrast.
$78
A vest in black at $78. It carries the same mark without turning into a second garment decision for the manager who already made the first one.
The pair, one click per size, $154.00
One garment decision, two pieces, one mark. The David Polo in white plus the Kevin Vest in black run $154.00 together, and the pair stops at XXL because the vest has no XXXL, so the top size on this bundle is five sizes deep rather than six.
Sequence
Why does an order run late when nobody disagrees?
Because the four answers arrive in the wrong order, not because anybody fought about them. Nobody argues over whether marketing owns the logo. What happens is that the date gets fixed by somebody who never saw a production clock, the garment gets picked next because that is the fun part, the money shows up when a quote needs a signature, and the brand answer arrives last, because nobody thinks to ask for it until a proof is already sitting on a screen waiting to be approved.
By then the proof is the thing creating the question instead of answering it. A brand answer that arrives late costs exactly what a wrong one costs, because both send the file back to the start and both reset the clock. If you want to see what order the four answers need to be in, look at the order of operations on our side and run yours to match it.
Signature
Can a committee approve a proof?
No. A committee can advise, and often should, but a proof takes one signature. If three people have to agree before the file moves, the clock does not start on the day you approve it, it starts on the day the last of the three replies, and nobody schedules around that day because nobody can predict it. Give one person the authority to accept the proof and let the other two send opinions to that person instead of to the decorator.
The way to keep a committee useful is to make it argue early, in writing, about the thing it actually owns. Settle the brand answer before a proof exists and the proof becomes a yes or no instead of a discussion. We wrote up the apparel brand guidelines a production floor can actually follow for exactly that, and if you want to know what the owner is actually putting a name to, our piece on the paperwork that follows the yes covers it.
A proof does not need agreement. It needs one name with the authority to say yes.01
Stock
How fast does a stock garment order move?
About 7 to 10 business days from proof approval. Two products share this page and they run on two different clocks, so the first thing to settle is which one you are buying. A mark put on garments that already exist is the 7 to 10 business day answer, and production starts the day you approve the proof, not the day you first called. Whenever the date on the calendar is inside six weeks, this is the answer, and the honest version of the conversation is that the garment choice narrows to what is already made.
Custom
How long does a garment built from the fabric up take?
About 45 days door to door, with production alone running 30 to 35 of those days. A garment built from the first thread buys you fabric woven or knit to your spec, dyed to an exact color, private label neck tags and trim detail that no stock piece will give you, and it costs the calendar what it costs. Set that number next to the date the event owner already fixed. If the two do not meet, you have learned which clock you are on before you promised anybody anything.
What the owner brings to the first call is a settled question rather than an open one, and we already laid out what that looks like in our piece on what to ask a company apparel vendor.
What we will not do
We cannot tell you which person inside your company should hold this order, because we do not know your org chart or who really controls the budget line the shirts come out of. We also will not read your own approval policy for you, so if it requires a second signature somewhere, find that out before you hand anybody a date.
Questions that come up before the first proof
Who approves a company apparel order?
One person, and it is whoever can accept a proof without asking permission. Four decisions feed that signature, but only the signature starts production.
How many people should approve the proof?
One. If three people have to agree, the clock starts on the day the last of the three replies, not on the day you approve it.
Who decides which garment the order uses?
Whoever manages the people who will wear it. The motion the job asks for decides the shirt, not the org chart.
Who signs off on the logo?
Whoever owns the brand. A logo is not a decision until somebody with authority names the file, the size, the placement and the color.
Who owns the budget for company apparel?
Whoever owns the budget line the shirts come out of, which is frequently not the department wearing them. Find that line before you ask for a price.
How long does a company apparel order take?
A mark put on stock garments runs about 7 to 10 business days from proof approval. A garment built from the fabric up runs about 45 days door to door, with production alone taking 30 to 35 of those days.
Name the owner, then ask us for a price.
Tell us who can accept the proof and when the shirts have to exist, and we will tell you which clock your order runs on before you commit to anything.
Both links open a form on our site. Nothing is ordered and nothing goes into production until you approve a proof.
