A definitive guide to choosing the right cricket clothing supplier

Choosing the right sportswear supplier to kit out your cricket team can often be a complex and difficult decision and there are lots of things you should consider before spending your own, your teammate’s and sometimes your parents’ money!

The main reason that the personalised sportswear market exists is so that when the cricket team you play for takes to the pitch you not only look like a team, but you have created an identity that showcases who you are. This can include team colours, club logos, names and numbers on the back or even a local sponsor, all of which gives you your own team brand identity.

Cricket teamwear, when it’s not pristine whites, has historically been made in very traditional colours with limited choice (normally Navy, Forest Green and Maroon), and the methods of purchasing have in the past varied depending on your location with the options limited to a physical cricket shop, an embroidery and printing company, or simply just knowing a friend who knows someone that can get some team kit for everyone.

Up to this point, cricket team kit has often been the responsibility of one person, who is almost always not a specialist in the field and so can often end up with a garage or lounge full of leftover kit, or the wrong sizes of garments which take an eternity to get rid of. By the time you do, the kit has also probably gone out of ‘fashion’ and it is time to start the whole process again! We often hear of customers who think they are making money for their team on the club kit as they charge everyone an extra pound for each item. But when you hold stock for your cricket club, anything that is left over then costs you money,

At Serious Cricket we have been delivering personalised team kit to over 1,000 cricket teams like yours for the past 15 years. Our experience is that when selecting a new cricket teamwear supplier you should consider the following 10 key things:

1 – The process of making personalised team kit

A lot of suppliers will take your bulk order and then, once you have agreed on the designs and found the person in your club who has the copy of the club logo, go and source the product from outside of the UK. This can often increase the manufacturing times and means that suppliers have no control of the production quality. While lots of factories abroad have been making kit for a while, meaning the quality is often OK, that still removes the opportunity to ‘top up’ your cricket 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, leaving you with a grumpy teammate who can’t get hold of a shirt that fits.

An alternative for some teams or suppliers is sourcing their own garments. They might buy a set of plain Adidas shirts and then get them personalised using a separate embroidery or printing company, as they do not often have this facility ‘in house’. Again, this creates longer waiting times and can increase the cost of items, with the supply chain now involving a few different people. It is also difficult to go back and get the same or similar shirts the following year.

A word of caution: designing, manufacturing and producing sublimated team kit is a time and labour-intensive process. Over the years at Serious Cricket 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; 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.

7 – Manufacturer and quality

How important to your teammates is the brand of kit you wear? Do you have to be wearing Adidas or New Balance or given the points above and any number of recent headaches, is there scope for some flexibility?

In every cricket team up and down the country there will always be someone in the side who thinks they are the next Ben Stokes, Jofra Archer or Heather Knight. They will want to look like them and play like them, and wearing the same kit as their heroes can help them do that.

There is certainly some pride that goes along with wearing a national team supplier’s kit; it can be seen as a prestigious uniform amongst your peer groups. The quality of this kit is likely to be good and the duration of it should match. The disadvantage of using a ‘big brand’ manufacturer is that they don’t work directly with local recreational cricket teams; their priorities are with national organisations, high profile professional sports teams and global leisurewear. This will then leave you in a situation of working with a local supplier who must source the kit. The design and colour choice can then be limited and there is no guarantee on longevity and kit availability.

If you are looking at using a cricket specific brand or a smaller local brand, or even an unbranded range of teamwear as your next kit choice, then often you can ask for samples of kit. Don’t be worried if you are charged for them – most suppliers will credit you back on return. Otherwise, if everyone asked for a free sample, that’s a lot of free kit being given away. You will be surprised by the quality of these kits as they are often made using similar fabric choices and using the same manufacturing processes as the big brands. Always remember that it is your brand identity that should come ahead of the manufacturer anyway as it is your cricket team kit

You are never going to please everyone with the kit choice you make. It is a no-win situation and our experience suggests that eight players don’t really care what they have, two are normally disappointed and two are extremely pleased, so make sure you have all the other recommendations ticked off.

8 – Reputation and trading history

You probably play against different cricket teams every week of your season. You will see on the cricket pitch what kit people are using and how good they look, and they will often let you know what the buying and 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 cricket teams via our online store model, it took us until we reached 125 different cricket clubs just to cover the costs of our infrastructure. We put in to do this, and if a supplier has only 20-40 accounts on their website, they are likely to be a reseller of other brands and so longer-term supply could be more of an issue.

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

In today’s world, the 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.

Due diligence: Whilst also understanding a supplier’s reputation, which is a subjective view a lot of the time, have a look at the Companies 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 big on the outside may actually 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.

9 – Discounts

Everyone is always looking for the best possible deal for their personalised cricket team kit as there is a fine balance between expecting everyone to wear it, but also having to ask people to buy it. Most sportswear suppliers will offer you a discount, but it is likely to be linked to quantities ordered. As a manufacturer of cricket team clothing at Serious Cricket, we know it is much easier to make 50 shirts for a club in one go than make the 50 shirts individually on different days of the year.

We also know that cricket is very much a seasonal business. If you are happy to order your cricket kit in January, way ahead of the season starting, 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!

10 – Duration

There is plenty to think about when choosing your next cricket team kit supplier. From kit ordering mechanism, minimum order quantities, the longevity of kit to the colour and style of it, it can be a bit of a minefield. To avoid having to regularly go through what can be a drawn-out process, 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.