Many suppliers will take your bulk order and then source the product from outside the UK once you have agreed on the designs, and found the person in your club who has a copy of the club logo.

This can often increase the manufacturing times and means that suppliers have no control over the production quality. That said lots of factories abroad have been making kit for a while so the kit quality is often ok, but there is never the opportunity to ‘top up’ your team kit as there will be minimum order quantities required.

This is not ideal if you are the one person dishing out kit from your garage and you run out of medium-sized match shirts, as you are likely to be without them for the rest of the season with a grumpy teammate who cannot get hold of a shirt!

An alternative for some teams or suppliers is that they source their own garments such as buying a set of plain Adidas shirts, and then get them personalised using a separate embroidery or printing company as they do not have this facility ‘in house’.

Again, this creates longer waiting times and can increase the cost of items as it is now being made by a few different people in the supply chain. It is also difficult to go back and get the same shirts the following year.

At Serious Sport, we invented a much simpler solution to purchasing team kit and launched the first online team store platform over a decade ago whereby a sports team can simply select its range of garments, personalise items with the team logos and sponsors and have it hosted online for individual members to order anytime regardless of the season.

Not only does this mean teams do not need to hold stock, but all orders are produced and dispatched within five working days. This solution is possible as all the garments are made, embroidered, and printed by hand at our premises in the UK.

Our biggest recommendation when you are selecting your new teamwear provider is to use a supplier that will operate an online team store platform for free for you, and manufacture everything in-house as they are then in control of all the production, quality and lead times.

This is normally the most critical factor when ordering kit as it is not human nature to think of ordering new kit 8-12 weeks before the season starts – which is often way before you have even begun to think about playing let alone what kit you’ll be wearing!

If someone in the club is very organised and can get the whole squad to commit and pay this far in advance, then maybe it is possible, otherwise, you should consider using a supplier that offers an online store platform as they can offer a 1-2 week lead time on all kit.

This is often a challenge as not all team members want to break the bank to look the part. As with everything you purchase though if it is cheap, it may not last long and you will be replacing items most seasons plus players may not want to wear it, so you need to find a suitable balance.

When looking at different club clothing suppliers try and look across a range of garments.

Some suppliers will allow individuals to further personalise items such as adding names, numbers and initials – these are often an extra cost, although are invariably cheaper when done by a company in-house with the equipment to do it.

Some online platform suppliers, including us at Serious, allow you to ‘mark-up’ team items to add a small contribution to your club funds. Be aware that this will obviously inflate the end cost to the team member.

Another option is to ask suppliers if they offer a rebate scheme, but this may be linked to how much you spend.

If you have looked after your team kit requirements in the past you will realise that it is not an exact science!

After an online ordering platform, this would be our next biggest recommendation to consider.

Once the excitement of a new kit launch has passed, you are almost certainly left with one disorganised member who wants to order the one match shirt that you have not got.

A teamwear supplier that can take repeat orders with no minimum quantities comes into their own at this point. Again, this will only be possible by using someone who manufactures everything in-house or carries a vast amount of branded stock.

When choosing a new team kit, you will likely be looking for one sportswear company that can produce the on-field playing kit as well as some nice off-field kit that you can turn up to games in, wear for training or in the bar after a match or simply lounge around in at home.

A good rule of thumb here is that you do not want to offend anyone with your teamwear colour choice – hence you don’t see many bright yellow tracksuit bottoms and hoodies around, but you will see them in darker colours such as black & navy but with a hint of colour in. Whichever training kit you go for it will likely be a stock range garment from a supplier and therefore likely to be more readily available too.

On the pitch, you can be a bit more creative and bolder with your colour choice and style so you can stand out from the rest of the teams.

Often teams will have a main club colour that historically they have always been associated with, and this could be the starting point for your new match kit.

Bespoke Kit

Good sportswear suppliers will either have a stock range of the main club colour match kits or for those looking for something more advanced and unique, look out for the suppliers that offer a ‘Bespoke Made’, ‘Made to Order service’ or ‘Kit Builder’ service which often means the kit will be sublimated allowing you to design your own playing coloured kit from scratch completely.

The process of sublimation allows the design to be fully dyed into the fabric doing away with the printed and embroidered logos and you get a unique playing kit.

A word of caution: designing, manufacturing and producing sublimated team kit is a time and labour-intensive process.

Over the years at Serious, we have refined our dedicated production team doing this all year round in the UK and can now offer bulk orders in 3-4 weeks with no minimum order top-ups in 1-2 weeks.

However, we are one of the very few companies using this process of manufacturing in the UK and so the majority of teamwear suppliers will do this abroad creating longer lead times of 4-6 weeks, without the ability to offer no minimum order quantities.

You play against different teams every week of your season and will see on the pitch what kit people are using and how good they look, and they will often let you know what the buying & service experience has been like.

Again, don’t be frightened to ask a supplier how many teams they supply and what their stock holdings are to ensure supply to everyone.

We know that when we first started out supplying teams via our online store model, it took us until we reached 125 different clubs just to cover the costs of the infrastructure!

If a supplier has only 20 - 40 accounts on their website, they are likely to be a reseller of other brands so longer-term supply could be more of an issue.

Likewise, a local supplier to a team can also be good as it reduces any delivery charges if teammates can visit a local shop to collect, and often it may well be a long-standing operation that has supplied locally for a long period.

In today’s world, larger online retailers will often have an independent review service attached to their sites such as Feefo or Trust Pilot. This will also give you a good independent gauge as to what you can expect from any future supplier.

A supplier’s reputation is a subjective view a lot of the time so have a look at the company house website, where all companies are registered and you will be able to look at some basic financial and structural details of a company you are considering using.

You will be surprised what you find and those who appear too big on the outside may be quite small on the inside. If they are not profitable it could affect your supply of garments in the future and if they don’t exist on the site, they are probably operating out of their garage.

Everyone is always looking for the best possible deal for their personalised team kit as it is a fine balance between expecting everyone to be wearing it, and you also have to ask people to buy it.

Most sportswear suppliers will probably offer you a discount, but it is likely to be linked to quantities ordered.

As a manufacturer of team clothing at Serious, we know it is much easier to make 50 shirts for a club in one go than to make the 50 shirts individually on different days of the year.

We also know that some sports are very much a seasonal business but if you are happy to order your kit way ahead of the season, that is your best time to be looking for discounts.

If a supplier is refusing any discounts two weeks before the season starts, do not be offended it is probably good that they are busy for the longevity of your supply contract!

Hopefully the above gives you plenty to think about when choosing your next team kit supplier.

From the kit ordering mechanism, minimum order quantities, and the longevity of kit to the colour and style of it, it can be a bit of a minefield.

For all the above reasons we recommend that you look at making a minimum commitment of three years for your next range of team kit, as it will mean everyone has time to purchase across the whole team and where there are juniors involved it means that there is a certain amount of lifespan to it all.