Outdoor & Sportswear
Manufacturer

A hardshell is a waterproof barrier. A membrane behind the face fabric, taped seams, and a hood built to keep water out. It will keep the wearer dry in sustained rain, and it will always breathe less than a softshell, because a membrane that stops water under pressure necessarily restricts vapour leaving.

A softshell is a comfort garment. A stretch woven face bonded to a warm backing — usually microfleece. It blocks wind, sheds light rain, moves with the body and breathes far better. It is not waterproof and should never be sold as such.

The honest way to choose: if the wearer is working hard, a softshell wins most days, because sweat is the more common cause of being wet. If the wearer is exposed to sustained rain with no way out of it, they need the hardshell and will accept the breathability cost. The best-selling outdoor ranges carry both and are clear about which is which.

Do not sell a softshell as waterproof. A water-resistant finish on a softshell will handle drizzle and then wet out, and a customer who was told "waterproof" reports it as a defect. Publish the actual claim — water-resistant, or a stated hydrostatic head — and the complaint disappears.

Microfleece — thin, light, fast-drying. A next-to-skin or light mid-layer, and the standard backing bonded behind a softshell face. Very little warmth on its own.

Polar fleece — the familiar mid-weight. Warm for its weight, cheap, and the default for a general-purpose mid-layer. Its weakness is wind: it is porous, so it needs a shell over it in anything but still conditions.

Sherpa and high-pile — deep pile that traps a lot of air. Warmest and bulkiest, strong on hand-feel and increasingly a lifestyle rather than performance choice. Slow to dry.

Grid fleece — a knitted grid of raised squares with channels between them. It gives warmth close to a polar fleece at lower weight, and the channels move air and moisture, which is why it dominates active layering. It costs more and it is worth it on anything aerobic.

Two things to specify whichever you choose: an anti-pill finish, because pilling is the reason a fleece looks old while it is still warm, and the weight in gsm, because "polar fleece" spans a very wide range. Our fabric library sets out the families and the weights we hold.

A wind shell that does not get carried does not get used. Its entire value is that it is in the bag on the day the wind comes up, which makes packed size and weight the primary specification rather than a bullet point.

State the packed size you want — into its own pocket, into the hood, or into a supplied pouch — and the target weight. Those two figures drive fabric choice more than anything else, and a design that ignores them produces a jacket that stays at home.

The hood has to be dealt with. A stowaway hood into the collar, a roll-and-secure hood, or no hood at all. A permanently attached hood on a wind shell flaps in exactly the conditions the garment is for, so it needs an adjuster that actually holds.

Elastic and cord placement decide whether it flaps. Cuffs, hem and hood are where wind gets in and where noise comes from. Elasticated cuffs and a hem drawcord are cheap and they are the difference between a wind shell and a bag.

DWR is a finish, not waterproofing. It makes water bead so the face does not wet out and go heavy. It wears off, and reproofing belongs on the care label rather than in the marketing.

Club, team and event programmes behave differently from a retail range, and planning for that up front avoids most of the friction.

Names and numbers are per-piece work. Individual personalisation is a separate operation from the base garment, and it needs a clean, checked list — a misspelled name is a remake, not a correction.

Repeat orders need the dye lot conversation. A club that adds six shirts in March against an order made in September will see a shade difference unless fabric was reserved. Say at the outset whether top-ups are likely; reserving fabric is cheap, matching a lot afterwards is not.

Sublimation needs polyester. Edge-to-edge printing bonds dye into polyester fibre, so it needs 85 percent polyester or above on a white or light base. A cotton-rich garment cannot take it — that is a fibre decision made at brief stage, not a print decision made later. The process and its limits are set out on our printing page.

Size curves for teams are not retail curves. Squads skew differently from the general public and often need a wider range at both ends. Ask for the actual sizes before committing quantities rather than applying a standard curve.