We could not be more thankful for each and every one of our clients! We have grown in the past year faster than we could’ve ever imagined. Due to this, we’re expanding into a new manufacturing facility in Colombia and are expanding our fabulous team to work faster and more efficiently than ever before. We always try to be as transparent as possible with our clients, and therefore, have a few tips and tricks to making sure you get your gorgeous custom pieces exactly when you need them. Here is the best way to plan your team wear purchase and some information you may not already know.
Design Process
To begin as a new client with Limelight, the first step is to choose the style you’d like and purchase your design, which is our only set up fee! Once the design fee has been paid, you’ll be shipped a physical copy of our color chart so you can choose your colors first hand. Don’t see your color? We offer color matching at no additional cost. If you’re choosing a color from our chart and only have a few revisions to the initial designs sent to you, the design process can take only a week. However, our goal for you is to have your team wear exactly how you like it, therefore, your Teamwear Specialist will work with you until you’re happy with your final design. The design process can take anywhere from 1-3 weeks depending on your response time and how many changes you’d like made to your design. We also recommend factoring in time if you’d like to do custom color matching as we print custom swatches at our manufacturing facility and mail them to you for approval. We provide you with a wide range of shades to choose from to ensure you get your perfect shade match. This process can add around two weeks to the design stage.
Sizing
You don’t need to have your design completed to size your students. We have two options when it comes to our sizing process. Our first and highly recommended option is to rent a sizer set which you keep in-house for 4-5 days. The sizer sets include a run of sizes in the garment you selected and include two garments. You’re able to add more garments to your sizer set for a small fee. The sizer sets are $100 to rent. We highly recommend renting the sizer sets if you’re new to Limelight as all of our garments are custom patterns and therefore don’t always align with other retail brands. For the following years, many of our clients use their existing garments to size any new students.
Our other sizing option is to size your students individually by hand and refer to our Sizing Chart for all of your students. This is a great option if you’re in a time crunch and are unable to wait for a sizer set to arrive. However, it is highly recommended that you rent a sizer set as that is how you know the garments will fit your students perfectly. Custom team wear is an investment and therefore, it’s worthwhile to take the time to size your students properly. We recommend ordering your sizer sets as soon you’ve selected your garments to speed up the process.
Production Seasons
During the months of September-February are by far the busiest times for our manufacturing facility. During this time of year, production times can be anywhere between 8-10 weeks compared to our off-season 6-8 week production times. Knowing this, we recommend planning out your year and ordering your team wear earlier than you normally would to receive it faster and be way ahead of the game when it comes time for competition or an event that you have. Designs can be created at any time of the year and loaded into your account so that during the busier season, you have your designs out of the way!
Once you’ve completed your design, and your Teamwear Specialist has let you know that it’s been uploaded into your account on the website, the design will forever remain in your account unless you request them to be removed. There are never any additional fees to reorder the same design that you’ve had in the past! We never discontinue any of our products so that you never have to worry about your team not all having the same team wear.
Process
The Limelight Team always does our very best to get you your order in a timely manner. However, the main benefit of working with Limelight Teamwear is that you receive 100% custom garments that you created alongside our design team. You know that your team wear will be truly unique to your team. Due to the level of customization that Limelight offers, our production times may be longer than other, less custom, companies.
Let’s take a peek behind the scenes and review all the steps that are taken to create your custom team wear.
Printing
The first step in creating your custom garments is to print them on special paper to be sublimated. Once our production team has your design and the order has been placed, we start the printing process! We print your order on massive sheets of specialized paper created for sublimation. We print each section of your garment separately; if you ordered a jacket, we print the back, the front, the sleeves, and any bands all separately. The paper is then taken to our sublimation machine. For all Evolution Collection garments, every piece of fabric begins as white fabric. The next step is to manually line up each piece of the garment with the printed design. The fabric and printed paper is then run through the sublimation machine, fusing the ink to the white fabric to make them one.
Sewing
Once all of the fabric pieces have been printed with your custom design, it’s time to sew all the individual pieces together by hand to create your order. We own our manufacturing facility in Medellin, Colombia and pay all of our Colombian staff 20% above industry standard. We have a team of highly-talented sewers that take time and care while assembling your custom garments. The timing of this process varies between products. For example, a Custom Scrunchie can take under five minutes to assemble, while an Evolution Windbreaker Jacket can take approximately 90 minutes to complete.
Quality Control
Once the order is complete, it’s moved to the quality control stage before it goes to the packing and shipping department. Our team carefully looks over the details of each garment to ensure everything was created properly. In the extremely rare case that an error is missed, simply contact your Teamwear Specialist and they will be there to solve the error for you.
After the quality control process, it’s time to pack and ship your order to either our Canadian or American repacking center. From our manufacturing facility, your order may be shipped to us in a larger box with another team’s orders. Therefore, we receive it in the respective country, review the order to make sure the quantities are correct and repack it in boxes and ship it off to your shipping address. This is the stage that you will receive your tracking number and be able to track your parcel from our repacking center to you. This shipping time can vary between 2-5 days.
Receiving Your Order
Then, the fun begins! It’s time to unbox your brand new team wear order. Record your unboxing and send it to the Limelight team to be shared on our socials and other promotions. A lot of our client’s favorite part of receiving team wear is watching their kids put it on for the first time and see the instant confidence boost that it gives them. New team wear is always such an exciting thing for any studio or club and we love to share that moment with you! Send us photos of your team in their new gear and don’t forget to tag us!
Now that you have a better understanding of the steps that we go through to create your custom pieces, you’ll be more educated when talking with your Teamwear Specialist and can understand the timeline much better. Still have questions? Your Teamwear Specialist is always an email or call away! Contact us today to get started on your custom team wear order.