A step-by-step walkthrough for club secretaries and team managers ordering custom kit for the first time - with real timelines, so you can work backwards from your season start.
Every August, we take calls from clubs who ordered kit six weeks too late - and now face starting the season in last year's outdated shirts, or with three new signings wearing plain training tops. It's almost never because the supplier was slow. It's because nobody told the volunteer ordering the kit how the process actually works, or how long each stage really takes.
So here's the whole thing, stage by stage - exactly what happens when you order with My Club Group, how long each step takes, and where first-time orders most often go wrong. By the end you'll be able to put a date in the diary for when your order needs to go in.
The timeline at a glance
Here's the full journey, working forwards. If your season starts in early September, count backwards: your enquiry should land with us by early July at the latest.
| Stage | Typical duration | What you're doing |
| 1. Enquiry & quote | 1-2 working days | Sending your brief, receiving pricing |
| 2. Design & proofing | 1–2 weeks | Reviewing proofs, confirming colours & sponsors |
| 3. Sizing & player orders | 1–2 weeks | Collecting sizes, running a sizing check |
| 4. Production | 3–4 weeks | Sublimation printing & garment assembly |
| 5. QC & delivery | 1 week | Quality check, dispatch, distribution |
1. The initial enquiry and quote
Most orders start with a quick brief: your sport, rough player numbers, and any design ideas or existing colours you want to keep. That's genuinely all we need - you don't need artwork, final numbers, or a committee decision to get a price.
From that brief, we'll turn around a ballpark quote within 1-2 working days. Nothing is locked in at this stage - it's simply enough for you to take a realistic price and timeline back to your committee.
2. Design and proofing
At this stage, we lock in your kit design, including your badge, sponsor logos, colours, and any names, numbers, and initials. Before anything goes near production, you'll receive a digital proof - a mock-up of exactly how the kit will look. Proofs typically go through one or two rounds of revisions.
Three things to check on every proof before you sign off:
- Colours against your club's official Pantone references - screen colours lie, Pantone numbers don't.
- Sponsor logo placement and sizing - get written sign-off from the sponsor too, not just the committee.
- Every personalisation detail: initials, squad numbers, captain's armband, the lot.
“The mistake we see most often is a club approving a proof on a phone screen in a group chat. Take your time, look at it properly, and get two people to check it - a second pair of eyes on a proof costs nothing and saves receiving a misprinted kit.”
- Lucas, our Operations Manager
3. Sizing and player order collection
Once the design is signed off, attention turns to sizing - and this is the stage to slow down on. Sizing errors are the one of the biggest sources of reorders and complaints, and almost all of them are avoidable at this stage.
For team orders there are two routes: a size-run chart the club manager fills in, or - increasingly the default - a Club Shop ordering system where each player logs in individually and selects their own size and personalisation. The Club Shop route removes the manager as a single point of failure... Nobody's guessing whether your left-back is a Medium.
Whichever route you take, build in a proper sizing check before submitting final numbers - ideally with a sample size set at a training session. Our Guía de tallas covers how each garment fits.
4. Production
Our custom teamwear is produced using dye-sublimation printing, where the design is transferred en the fabric rather than on top of it. That means colours won't crack, fade or peel with washing. There's also no limit on how intricate the design can be - unlike screen printing, which is better suited to simple, low-colour-count jobs.
Production for a full custom order typically takes 3 to 4 weeks from final sign-off. This stage and the next one are processes you can't compress - which is why everything before it matters.
5. Quality check and delivery
Before dispatch, every order goes through a quality check: stitching, sizing accuracy against the chart you submitted, and print quality. Delivery is either to a single club address for the manager to distribute, or - for Club Shop orders - split and bagged per player, which saves your kit manager an evening of sorting.
6. Reorders and top-ups
Once your design and sizing are on file, reordering is quick. A shirt for a January signing or a replacement for a lost jersey doesn't restart the whole process, because your design template and colour specification are already saved. A one-off replacement typically takes less time than a full production run, as all the artwork is ready to go.
Ask about reorders before you place your first order. It's the question first-time secretaries never think to ask, and the one they most wish they had come February.
At My Club, every club can set up a Portal del cliente y Free Online Club Shop - meaning reorders are smooth sailing.
Our honest advice: the clubs who get it right
Having run this process with 11,000+ clubs, we'll be blunt: the smoothest orders are never the fastest ones. The clubs who have a great experience are the ones who treat proofing and sizing seriously instead of racing to order. A few extra days checking a proof or trying on a sample set saves weeks of frustration - and the cost of a re-run - later.
And if kit budget is the thing holding your order back, that's solvable too: our Kit Funder platform matches clubs with local business sponsors, so the kit can be part-funded before you even place the order.
¿Listo para empezar?
If your season starts in September, the clock is already running. Solicitar un presupuesto with your sport, player numbers and colours - you'll have a price within a couple of working days and a clear timeline to work back from.
