Every club has one. The player who joined in January, whose shirt is a slightly different blue to everyone else's, visible in every team photo for the rest of the season. Nobody set out for that to happen. It happens because a kit order placed in July and a kit order placed in January are, from the manufacturer's point of view, two completely separate things.
This guide covers why mid-season reorders drift out of match, and the small number of decisions you can make at the start of a season to stop it. It applies whether you run a grassroots football side, a hockey club, a netball squad or a school team.
Why mid-season kit stops matching
Three things cause a mismatch, and they are worth understanding separately because the fixes are different.
1. Dye lots
Fabric is dyed in batches. Every batch — a dye lot — is mixed to a target colour and checked against a tolerance, but no two batches come out perfectly identical. Under normal lighting the difference is often invisible. Line two shirts up side by side on a bright pitch or under floodlights and it can be obvious, particularly on mid-tones: royal blue, maroon, bottle green and grey are the usual offenders. Black, white and very pale colours are far more forgiving.
Dye lot variation is a property of textile manufacturing, not a supplier error. No supplier can promise an exact match across production runs months apart.
2. The garment gets discontinued or changed
Teamwear ranges turn over. Manufacturers update a shirt's fit, change a fabric weight, drop a colourway, or retire a style entirely at the end of a season. If your club's shirt was a 2024/25 range item and you reorder in 2026, there is a fair chance the exact garment no longer exists. Even when the name stays the same, the cut can change — a slim-fit revision means your new medium does not fit like the old medium.
3. Decoration drift
If your crest was set up as a fresh embroidery stitch file, or your sponsor logo was re-typeset, or the club switched from screen print to DTF between orders, the decoration itself can differ — subtly different stitch density, a slightly different position on the chest, a marginally different white.
What to do at the start of the season
Most of the fix is preventative and costs very little.
Order a buffer. This is the single most effective thing you can do. Add roughly 10 to 15 per cent on top of your squad numbers, weighted towards your most common sizes. For a junior club, that usually means the middle of the age range; for adults, medium and large. Buffer stock comes out of the same dye lot and the same production run as everything else, so a shirt handed to a January signing matches perfectly. It also covers the shirt that gets ripped in a tackle or lost on a bus.
Confirm how long the range will be available. Ask your supplier, before you commit, how long the garment is expected to stay in the range and whether stock is held in the UK. A range with two or three seasons of life ahead of it is worth more to a club than a marginally cheaper one being discontinued in June.
Get everything recorded in writing. After your first order, make sure someone at the club has a written record of: the exact garment code and colour name, the decoration method used on each item, logo positions and sizes in centimetres, the thread or ink colour references, and the name and font used for numbers and initials. Store it somewhere that survives a change of committee — a shared drive, not one volunteer's inbox.
Ask the supplier to keep your artwork on file. A reputable supplier will store your digitised stitch file and print artwork so reorders do not need re-setup. This saves both money and consistency. Ours are kept indefinitely.
Sublimated kit versus stock garments
The two main routes to club kit behave very differently on reorders, and it is worth choosing with this in mind.
Stock garments with applied decoration — a catalogue shirt with your crest embroidered or printed on — can usually be reordered in ones and twos. The risk is dye lots and discontinuation.
Fully sublimated kit, where your design is dyed into blank white polyester panels and cut to order, has no dye lot problem at all: the colour is printed from your artwork file, so a shirt made in February prints the same as one made in August. The trade-off is minimum order quantities. Sublimation runs are typically economical from around ten to fifteen units, so a single replacement shirt is either expensive or simply not possible until you have enough to justify a run.
If your club expects a lot of mid-season churn — junior sections and university clubs especially — that minimum order quantity is a real consideration. Some clubs solve it by running sublimated match shirts with a decent buffer, and stock-garment training wear that can be topped up in singles.
For more on the distinction, see our guides to custom football team kit and training wear for sports clubs.
When the exact garment is gone
Sometimes you find out in November that the shirt is discontinued and you never ordered a buffer. Options, roughly in order of preference:
- Chase remaining stock. Suppliers and distributors often hold end-of-line stock. If you can secure the last few in the sizes you need, do it immediately rather than thinking about it.
- Accept a near match for non-playing kit. A training top or hoodie that is a shade off is far less noticeable than a match shirt. Push the mismatch to the items nobody photographs.
- Give new players the closest available shirt and plan a full re-kit. If you are going to be mismatched anyway, be deliberate about it — decide now when the whole squad gets replaced, and buy a proper buffer that time.
- Move to sublimation at the next re-kit. If matching has caused you repeated grief, sublimated kit removes the dye lot problem permanently.
Practical rules of thumb
- Order 10 to 15 per cent buffer, weighted to common sizes
- Take a squad list snapshot at the time of ordering so you know what was issued to whom
- Set a single mid-season top-up date rather than ordering one shirt at a time — cheaper on carriage and setup
- Keep numbers and names consistent by recording the exact font and application method
- Photograph the kit on day one; it is your reference when something arrives looking wrong
FAQ
How much colour variation between dye lots is normal?
A small but sometimes visible shift, most noticeable on mid-tone colours and in bright or artificial light. It is a normal characteristic of dyed textiles and not usually grounds for a return unless the difference is severe.
Can you match a kit I bought from another supplier?
Often, yes — we can recreate your crest artwork and find a close garment match. What we cannot guarantee is an exact fabric shade match to a garment we did not produce. We will tell you honestly how close we expect to get before you commit.
How much buffer stock should a junior club hold?
Around 15 per cent is a sensible starting point for junior sections, which see more mid-season joiners and more growth-related size changes than adult squads.
Is it cheaper to reorder or to re-kit the whole squad?
Reordering is almost always cheaper per unit if the garment is still available and your artwork is on file. A full re-kit only makes sense when the range has gone, the design is changing, or a new sponsor is coming on board.
Planning your club's kit?
We keep every club's artwork and garment specification on file so reorders match, and we will tell you upfront how long a range is expected to stay available. Browse our teamwear range or get in touch with your squad numbers and we will put a costed kit list together — buffer stock included.
