Whether you’re a team coach, a player, or the kind of parent who volunteers when no one else will, you’ve found yourself in the position of buying socks for your team. Unfortunately, there’s no playbook to guide you. No worries—if you choose the right manufacturer, their website will do most of the work for you. Here’s what to know before ordering custom socks.

You Don’t Have To Design

If you majored in graphic design, you probably feel confident going into this process. But those with no experience whatsoever can, too. There are a variety of pre-designed custom athletic socks to choose from that will suit any team’s unique spirit. You can have the players vote on their favorite or surprise them with the end product. Just a few of the options:

• Knee-high
• Over-the-knee
• Stirrups
• Striped
• Multi-striped
• Digital camouflage
• Stars
• Bars
• Solid
• Color-blocked

You Can Add Your Logo

If you want to personalize your team socks further, including an appliqué with your mascot can elevate a uniform’s style and personality. Just do some research to make sure you hold the rights to reproduce the illustration, or you could be infringing on a copyright. If you’re in the clear, you just need a logo design with a minimum of 150 dpi in one of these formats: JPEG, GIF, PNG, or SVG.

You Should Know Your Colors

If you’re content keeping it simple, choose a sock design with two colors, but you can add a third accent color, too. Before you start ordering, double-check your color palette. With more than 40 colors available, you won’t be able to simply pick something “blue.” Get confirmation about whether your team’s blue is Columbia Blue, Electric Blue, Air Force Blue, Royal Blue, Dark Royal, and so on. If you’re color-blind, you might want to recuse yourself from this step.

The Size Range Is Generous

Your players’ feet come in a breathtaking array of sizes, and when we say “breathtaking,” we mean that you don’t want to get down and measure them yourself. This is no time to pass out. Just ask for their shoe sizes, and do your best to include all those numbers. Your odds are good. A size medium, for instance, encompasses everyone from a size 6 to a 10. You’ll probably need to order a minimum of a dozen pairs of each size, so don’t stress out if a player is just outside the size range. That’s why quality athletic socks have superior stretch that can make up the difference.

You’ll Need Some Time

While going through a website and clicking on each sock detail doesn’t take long, the manufacturing process might. Allow about a month for your order to get back to you, or look for designs that the company can turn around quickly.

There’s not that much to know before ordering custom socks, and if you have questions, MK Socks is happy to answer them. Contact us for more information on how we can outfit your team for success.