Mid-season kit reordering: outfitting new players without redoing the whole set

The registration open days are over, the training slots are full — and then three new players turn up to the first September session with no shirt in their size. Do you have to reorder the club's entire kit? No. Mid-season reordering is a simple problem to solve — provided you chose the right way to produce your shirts in the first place.

Why reordering always lands in the autumn

A grassroots club's squad never freezes at kick-off. Registrations keep coming for weeks after the open days and the first fixtures. As a result, the kit you ordered over the summer for your core squad rarely covers everyone by late autumn. The same causes come round every season:

• late sign-ups, after the open day or the first match;
• an age group that grows and splits into a second team;
• a player who changes size — children especially, between September and January;
• a shirt torn, lost or faded in the wash;
• a keeper, a captain or a new recruit who joins the group along the way.

Reordering isn't an accident, then: it's a normal part of a team's life. The real question is being able to add one or two pieces without relaunching everything.

The real trap: the minimum order

This is where many clubs get stuck. Plenty of suppliers impose a minimum — 10, 15, sometimes 20 pieces — or make you relaunch the whole run for a couple of extra shirts. To kit out a single new member, the bill becomes absurd. At FLARE CUSTOM, production starts from a single piece, with no minimum, and pricing stays degressive by quantity. You order exactly what you're missing: one shirt, or three, or ten.

Sublimation: why a shirt reordered in November matches the one from September

The key to a successful reorder is reproducibility. With full-dye sublimation, colour and pattern are embedded in the fibre from your digital file, not laid on the surface. As long as the club keeps the model reference and the approved proof, a shirt reprinted three months later starts from the same file: same colours, same design, same placement of the logo and stripes. No drift from one batch to the next.

That's a decisive advantage over heat-pressed lettering (flocage), where a number or name can lift or age differently depending on how it was applied. Sublimation doesn't crack or peel: the newcomer's shirt blends into the existing set, with no obvious "one that was added later".

Plan for reordering from your very first order

A little method up front avoids plenty of emergencies later:

• Order a small buffer in common sizes with your first kit — two or three spare pieces cost less than a last-minute reorder.
• Keep an up-to-date size chart for every player; our guide to taking the team's measurements and the size guide (children 4-14, adults XS to 3XL) prevent mistakes.
• Hold on to the model reference and the approved proof: a reorder starts from the same file, with no need to redo the design or the proof.
• Budget for names and numbers for newcomers (an extra per piece).

How long a reorder takes

At the start of the season the calendar is busy, so it pays to plan ahead. Allow roughly 4 to 5 weeks of production after proof approval, the proof itself being sent within 24 to 48 hours, then standard delivery in 6 working days across Europe (tracked DHL). If a match is close, an express option exists on shirts, t-shirts, shorts, rashguards and polos (production from 72h + 48h delivery). The details and special cases are on the production lead times page; for an exact figure, request a free, no-obligation quote.