Custom merchandise production for agencies.

That is a perfectly workable place to start. We can help establish what is feasible at the quantity, what manufacturing route makes sense, how much creative freedom there really is and where the budget is best spent.

You do not need to become a garment technologist to brief us. You do need to know what the product is trying to achieve.

If it is being retailed, the commercial model matters. If it is an activation gift, perceived value may matter more than retail margin. If it is the hero piece in a campaign, more of the budget probably belongs in that product than in six secondary items nobody remembers. Those are useful decisions to make before somebody starts choosing Pantones.

At lower volumes there are practical limits to how far we can alter the underlying product. Some fabrics have dye minimums. Specialist trims have production minimums. Completely custom components do not always make commercial sense for a small run. That does not mean a smaller project has to look generic. It means the design needs to use the right production route intelligently.

1. Under 250units

   Intelligent customisation

   Proven product blocks with intelligent customisation.

   Colour, artwork, branding, labels, trims and packaging can still create something highly distinctive, but there are limits to fully custom fabrics, components and construction.

2. 250–1,000units

   The sweet spot

   This is the sweet spot for many original merchandise collections.

   There is enough volume to move well beyond decorated blanks, introduce more considered fabrics, finishes and trims, and build several products around one visual idea while keeping the project commercially sensible. Enough volume to make the product genuinely distinctive without forcing the project into huge-volume manufacturing.

3. 1,000+units

   Full bespoke development

   Completely bespoke product development becomes far more viable.

   This can include purpose-developed fits, construction, specialist fabrics, custom components and products engineered specifically around the project.

These are planning bands rather than universal factory laws. A football shirt, heavyweight tee and technical jacket have different manufacturing economics. A better question than “What is the MOQ?” is: “At my quantity, how much of this product can realistically be customised?”

That changes both the commercial conversation and the product conversation. When you buy a premium blank through a traditional merchandise supply chain, the client is paying for somebody else’s garment before any branding has happened. Then the print or embroidery is added. Relabelling may be added. Handling and supplier margin follow.

By the time the finished item arrives, a surprising amount of budget can have gone into a product that still looks remarkably similar to everybody else’s. Direct manufacturing lets more of that budget go into the thing the client and customer actually receives. At the right quantity, the finished cost of making an original product can come surprisingly close to the finished cost of buying and decorating a premium blank.

Our manufacturing network has capacity of up to 40,000 units per week across the network. That figure matters for scale, but capacity alone does not guarantee a particular project slot. Product construction, materials, factory allocation and timing still need checking against the real brief.

We also develop T-shirts, heavyweight tops, headwear, training-inspired garments, accessories and wider capsule collections. The important thing is choosing products because they suit the audience and the job.

If an activation revolves around one genuinely desirable hero piece, we would rather put the budget into making that piece brilliant than stretch it across a dozen average products so somebody can say the range has twelve SKUs. A merchandise collection can be small and still feel complete.

Explore what we make

The football shirt as a hero product

Football shirts work particularly well for agencies because there is so much design language available before the graphics have even started. Fit, collar, rib, cuffs, panel shapes, fabric, badges, sponsor-style placements and era references all influence how the finished piece feels. That creates room to build something with a recognisable product identity rather than relying on a large print to do all the work.

Current standard pricing for custom football shirts

Minimum

25 per design

At 25 units

£26.95 each

At 2,500 units

£15.95 each

5,000+ units

Priced to the project

Explore custom football shirts

Where direct technical input would make the project easier, we can join the conversation as a product specialist if you want us there. Where you prefer to control every client interaction, we stay behind the agency. Direct client involvement is agreed with the agency first.

The important part is agreeing this before the project starts. The phrase white-label merchandise supplier can mean almost anything, so we would rather be specific about the working relationship than hide behind the terminology. Client communication, documentation, samples, approvals, packaging and delivery responsibilities should all be clear from the start.

Your relationship with the client remains yours. Our value is helping you deliver the product side without adding unnecessary drama to it.

White-label production in our services

If what you have is a slide saying “Premium 90s football shirt. Feels authentic. Not shiny. Launching in June.” we can also work with that. The first job is understanding what the product has to achieve.

Is it being sold or given away? Does it need to hit a retail margin? Is there a hero piece? Is the client expecting 100 units or 5,000? Is the launch date fixed? Does the packaging matter? Will the product go straight to a venue, warehouse or fulfilment partner?

Those decisions influence the manufacturing route considerably. Once we understand the commercial reality, we can help turn the creative into a production route that makes sense.

Agency projects can also be quoted on a trade basis where appropriate. The point is to give you enough commercial information early enough to know whether the idea belongs in the conversation.

A quote should make clear what is driving the number. Fabric, construction, quantity, branding method, custom trims, labels, packaging, sampling, development and delivery can all affect cost. If something expensive is adding very little to the final product, we would rather tell you than quietly put it in the quote and hope nobody notices.

If you know the budget, tell us. There is no prize for hiding it. A realistic budget lets us tell you where it is worth spending and where the client is unlikely to notice the difference.

Before the main production run, a physical pre-production sample is made and photographed for approval. The approved sample remains at the factory as the production reference. This stage matters because products behave differently in real life than they do on screen.

Colours change across materials. Embroidery has physical depth. Collars sit differently once sewn. Logos often need scaling once they are on an actual body rather than floating in Illustrator. That is why a sample should be treated as part of development rather than a ceremonial box to tick before production.

For agency teams, decide who has final sample authority before the sample arrives. Otherwise feedback has an extraordinary ability to multiply.

How we work, from development to delivery

For event-led projects, the current planning guidance is to allow around twelve weeks from brief to delivery, although exact timing depends on the product, artwork readiness, sampling, approvals and freight. That planning window covers more than factory sewing time. There is product setup, artwork approval, sampling, potential revisions, production, quality control, packing, freight and goods-in.

A factory can manufacture quickly and the project can still be late because artwork sat with the client for a week, sizes changed after sampling or another logo arrived after everything was supposedly locked. A good production plan works backwards from the real goods-in date and makes the approval points obvious.

We would rather tell you early that a finish is too risky for the deadline than tell you later that we were hoping for the best.

Check your project timeline with us

Those are different levels of work. We can help with early commercial and manufacturing guidance without turning every pitch into a full unpaid product-development programme. If original visual concepts or detailed development work are needed for a speculative pitch, agree that scope separately.

There is a difference between answering “Can we realistically manufacture this at 500 units for a June activation?” and “Can you design the entire range, engineer the products and provide presentation visuals by tomorrow morning while we decide whether the client likes the idea?”

Both can be conversations. They are simply not the same piece of work.

That may affect labelling, carton packing, size separation, barcode requirements, bagging or other project-specific details. These are boring details right up until nobody has thought about them. Then they become everybody’s afternoon.

Where requirements are known early, they can be built into the production plan rather than fixed at the end. If the client already has a fulfilment or merchandise partner, madebyobra can manufacture the relevant product and hand it into that existing operation rather than pretending every project needs a completely new ecosystem.

To give you a meaningful first answer, we need enough to understand:

• the product or idea
• approximate quantity
• intended use
• budget position
• required delivery date
• delivery destination
• who has final approval

Send artwork if you have it. Send references if you do not. Tell us which bits are confirmed and which bits are still moving.

A producer saying “client thinks 500, could become 1,500 after sign-off” is more useful than false precision. We can price the scenarios.

If the item is going to be photographed, sold, worn publicly, used as a hero piece, handed to talent or expected to survive long after the event, it deserves a proper product conversation.

Custom manufacturing becomes particularly compelling once quantities move into the hundreds. At that point, you may already be spending enough on premium blanks, decoration, relabelling and handling that a more original route deserves comparison.

You do not have to manufacture every product from scratch. Identify which piece carries the story and put the development where people will notice it.

We would avoid building an enormous range simply because there is budget for one. We would avoid approving creative before somebody checks whether the intended production method supports it. We would avoid assuming a low unit cost automatically creates the best client value.

And we would definitely avoid treating delivery as something to think about once production finishes. Most avoidable merchandise problems begin much earlier than the moment they become visible.