Most problems with a custom team kit are decided before anything is printed. By the time a box of twenty shirts arrives with the wrong sizes, a name misspelled or a sponsor logo too small to read, the mistake is usually three weeks old and sits in a decision nobody wrote down.
This is the order of operations for a custom kit, what gets decided at each stage, and the mistakes that are expensive to fix later. It applies whether you are kitting out a cricket side, a five-a-side team, a gym or a company football day.
Stage one: the brief
Before any design work, six things need answers. None of them are difficult questions, but leaving any of them open is what causes the problems later.
| Decision | Why it has to come first |
|---|---|
| What garments | Shirts only, or shirts, shorts and socks as a set |
| How many, by size | Drives fabric quantity and the whole quote |
| Sport and conditions | Decides fabric weight and fit before anything else |
| Personalisation | Names and numbers change the production method |
| Sponsor or club logos | Affects artwork, placement and approvals |
| The date you need them | Works backwards through every other stage |
The last one is the one teams underestimate. A kit needed for a specific fixture has to be worked backwards from that date through delivery, production, approval and design — and approval is the stage that slips, because it depends on people replying. Tell us the date you need the kit in hand, not the date you would like to place the order.
Stage two: design and mockup
A kit design is not a logo on a shirt. It is a front, a back, two sleeves, a collar, and on a full kit the shorts and socks as well, all of which have to look like they belong together. Expect to work from a mockup that shows every piece, not just the front.
Two things are worth insisting on before you approve anything. First, see the back as well as the front — the back is where names and numbers live, and where most of the surprises happen. Second, see the longest player name in the squad on the mockup, not a short placeholder. “KHAN” and “ABDUL REHMAN” are very different typesetting problems, and the second one decides the font size for the whole kit.
If you are designing from scratch rather than adapting something, the Custom Lab lets you set the garment, fabric and design in one place and see them together before you commit.
Stage three: sizing and the squad list
Sizing is the single biggest source of regret on a team order, and it is almost entirely avoidable. The problem is that people guess, and sports fit varies between manufacturers far more than high-street sizing does.
The reliable method is to measure a garment rather than a person. Ask every player to lay flat a shirt they already own and like the fit of, measure it across the chest and down the length, and send those two numbers. Compare those against the size chart instead of asking people what size they think they are. A player who says “large” may be describing a brand that runs two centimetres wider than the kit you are ordering.
| Approach | Reliability | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Players state their usual size | Low | Brand sizing varies widely |
| Body measurements | Moderate | Needs a fit allowance applied correctly |
| Measuring a garment they already own | High | Compares like with like |
| Trying on a physical size set first | Highest | Best for large or repeat orders |
Then there is the squad list itself. Send it as a spreadsheet with one row per player: name exactly as it should be printed, number, size, garment. Not a message thread, not a voice note, not a photo of a handwritten sheet. Whatever is in that spreadsheet is what gets printed, so one person should own it and check it twice. A misspelled name on a sublimated shirt cannot be corrected afterwards — the shirt has to be remade.
Stage four: fabric and production method
These two decisions are connected, and the design you just approved often decides them for you.
If the design runs edge to edge, crosses seams or uses gradients, it has to be sublimated, which means the fabric has to be polyester and the garment is best made cut-and-sew — printed as flat panels and then assembled. If the design is a crest and a sponsor logo on a plain base, a finished garment can be printed or screen printed instead, which is quicker and cheaper. The process is set out in full in sublimation printing for sports jerseys.
| Your design | Method | Fabric |
|---|---|---|
| Edge-to-edge pattern or gradient | Sublimation, cut-and-sew | Polyester |
| Names and numbers on every shirt | Sublimation | Polyester |
| Crest and sponsor on a plain base | Sublimation or screen print | Polyester |
| Small logo on a cotton training tee | Screen print or DTG | Cotton |
| Embroidered crest on a travel hoodie | Embroidery | Cotton or blend |
| Individual names only, small run | Heat transfer vinyl | Either |
Fabric weight is the other half of this stage, and it follows from the sport and the season rather than from preference. A kit for summer cricket and a kit for winter football want different cloth. If the weight figures are unfamiliar, GSM and fabric weight explained covers what the bands mean in practice, and cotton vs polyester covers the fibre side.
Stage five: approval
Approval is a real stage, not a formality, and it is the last point at which finding a mistake is free. What you are checking is specific:
- The spelling of every single name, read letter by letter against the squad list.
- Every number, and that no number appears twice.
- The size against each name — not just that the size breakdown totals correctly.
- Sponsor and club logos at the size they will actually be printed, not enlarged on screen.
- The placement of the crest relative to the collar and the chest seam.
- The back view, with the longest name in place.
It is worth having one person other than the person who wrote the squad list read the proof. The author of a list is the worst proofreader of it, because they read what they meant rather than what is there.
Stage six: production
Once approved, production runs in a fixed order, and none of it can be hurried without cost. Artwork is prepared for the chosen process. Fabric or blank garments are prepared. The design is printed. On a cut-and-sew kit, the printed panels are then cut and sewn into finished garments, which is why that route takes longer than printing a ready-made shirt.
Personalisation happens differently depending on the method: on a sublimated kit, names and numbers are part of the same print as everything else, so there is no separate step. On a screen-printed or vinyl kit, personalisation is a second pass applied to each shirt individually.
Our production lead time is about one week from the point you approve the proof. That is the making — printing, cutting and stitching — and delivery sits on top of it, so how long the kit takes to reach you depends on where you are. Cut-and-sew kits and very large runs can take longer, and we will say so when we quote rather than after you have ordered.
The mistakes that cost the most
| Mistake | What it costs | How to avoid it |
|---|---|---|
| Guessing sizes | Shirts that do not fit and cannot be resold | Measure a garment, not a person |
| Squad list in a chat thread | Wrong names printed | One spreadsheet, one owner |
| Approving only the front | Surprises on the back of every shirt | Insist on front, back and sleeve views |
| Using a short placeholder name | Long names set too small to read | Proof with the longest name |
| Low-resolution sponsor logo | Soft, blurred logo at full size | Ask the sponsor for vector artwork |
| Leaving the order date vague | Kit arrives after the fixture | Work backwards from the match day |
| Adding players after approval | A second production run and a second delivery | Confirm the squad before approving |
| Choosing fabric by price alone | Kit too hot or too thin for the sport | Choose weight for the season |
The pattern is the same in every row: the expensive mistakes are information problems, not manufacturing problems. Everything on that list is fixed by writing something down before production starts.
Ordering extras later
Plan for it, because it always happens — a new player signs, a shirt is lost, a sponsor wants one for the office. Two things make a repeat order straightforward: keeping the approved artwork files, and recording exactly what was ordered, including the fabric and weight. If you come back to us with the original order details we can match it; if the details are gone, a second batch may not match the first exactly, because fabric is bought in lots and dye lots vary slightly.
The practical move is to order a few spares in the common sizes at the same time as the main run. They cost less as part of the original order than as a separate one later, and they save you the matching problem entirely.
Frequently asked questions
What is the minimum order?
Ten kits for a custom order. Below that the setup work — artwork preparation, panel layout, getting the colours right — costs the same as it does for a hundred, so a run of three would carry a price per shirt nobody would want to pay. Anything already in our catalogue can be bought as a single piece; the minimum applies to custom production only.
How far in advance should we order a kit?
Earlier than feels necessary, and the reason is approval rather than production. Production itself is about a week and is predictable; the stage that slips is waiting for a committee, a sponsor or a captain to confirm something, and that can quietly eat a fortnight. Work backwards from the fixture: delivery, then a week of production, then however long your side realistically takes to approve a proof. Give us the date you need the kit in hand and we will tell you the latest date we can take the order.
Can we see a physical sample before committing?
Yes, and for a large or repeat order it is worth it: a physical sample settles fabric feel and fit in a way no mockup can. A sample costs roughly five times the unit price — so on a kit priced around Rs 1,000, the sample is about Rs 5,000. That sounds steep until you weigh it against a run of fifty in the wrong weight. It also adds a round trip to the timeline, so decide early rather than halfway through approval.
What file format should we send our logo in?
Vector, ideally — an AI, EPS, SVG or PDF with the artwork still editable. Vector scales to any size with clean edges and makes colour separation straightforward. A logo pulled off a website is typically a few hundred pixels wide, which is fine on a screen and visibly soft across a chest. If the sponsor only has a raster file, ask them for the largest version they hold.
Can different players have different garments in the same kit?
Yes. A goalkeeper in a different colour, a few players in long sleeves, a mix of shirt and shorts sizes — all normal. Put it in the spreadsheet as its own row per player so nothing is inferred.
What happens if a name is spelled wrong?
If it was wrong on the approved proof, the shirt has to be remade, because a sublimated print cannot be altered. If it was right on the proof and wrong on the shirt, that is our mistake and we fix it. This is the whole reason the approval stage exists, and why it is worth reading carefully.
Do the shorts and socks have to match exactly?
They should be designed together, but exact colour matching across different fabrics is harder than it sounds — the same dye reads slightly differently on a jersey knit and on a ribbed sock. If precise matching matters, say so at the design stage so the colours are chosen with that in mind rather than corrected afterwards.
How do we start?
Send us the six answers from stage one and your design if you have one, or build the garment and fabric in the Custom Lab and we will take it from there. If you are not sure about fabric or printing yet, tell us the sport and the season and we will recommend rather than ask you to choose blind.
Related: sublimation printing for sports jerseys, cotton vs polyester and GSM and fabric weight explained.
For cricket specifically, the fabric specification is covered in choosing cricket kit fabric for hot weather.
Before you send anything to a printer: how to prepare artwork for custom apparel.