Nine to eleven business days. That is how long most TENSILE orders take to reach you, and it is longer than you are used to waiting. The reason is simple: nothing you order exists yet at the moment you order it. It gets made, then it ships.
That is the entire explanation. What follows is why we chose it, what it costs you, and what you get back — so you can decide whether the trade is worth making before you buy rather than after.
Nothing sits in a warehouse waiting for you
Most activewear brands guess. Months before a season, someone decides how many size-medium sage leggings people will want, and that number gets manufactured and shipped to a warehouse. When you order, a picker walks to a shelf and puts one in a box. Two days later it arrives.
That speed is real, and it is genuinely better than waiting. But it is paid for, and you are the one paying.
When the guess is too low, the item sells out and you wait months for a restock. When the guess is too high, which is far more common, the surplus gets marked down at the end of the season, then marked down again, and whatever never sells is destroyed or landfilled. The cost of everything that did not sell is built into the price of everything that did.
We do not guess, because we do not hold stock. Your legging is cut and printed after you pay for it. There is no surplus, because there is no forecast.
The wait breaks down into two parts
Production takes two to five business days. That is the cutting, printing, sewing and finishing of an individual garment. Then it ships, and shipping takes the time shipping takes.
Different pieces take different amounts of time, because they are made differently and in different facilities. We publish the real number on every product page rather than one average that is wrong for most of the range.
| Piece | Typical arrival |
|---|---|
| Seamless Scoop Bra, Seamless High Rise Legging | 6 to 9 business days |
| Racerback Bras, High Rise Leggings, Capri, Lace Crops and Shorts, Long Sleeve Crop | 9 to 11 business days |
| Cropped Half Zip Windbreaker | 11 to 14 business days |
If you order two pieces made in different facilities, they may arrive in separate parcels on separate days. We ship each as it is finished rather than holding the fast one back to travel with the slow one. You are charged once for shipping, which is nothing, and you get tracking for each parcel.
What you actually get for the wait
Three things, and only one of them is about sustainability.
You are not subsidising unsold stock. There is no dead inventory to write off, so there is no write-off priced into what you pay. Every colourway costs the same to us whether it sells ten units or a thousand.
Nothing is ever out of stock. Sizes do not sell out. A colourway does not disappear because the initial run was too small. If it is on the site, it can be made.
Nothing gets destroyed. The fashion industry incinerates and landfills a genuinely enormous quantity of unsold clothing every year. We produce none of it, not because we are virtuous but because the model does not create any.
Here is the part that is worse
You wait. That is a real cost and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
If you need something for Saturday, do not order it from us on Thursday. Buy it somewhere that has it on a shelf. We would rather tell you that than take the order and disappoint you.
There is a paid express option at checkout, but be clear about what it does: it speeds up transit only. It does not shorten the two to five days your piece spends being made. On most orders it saves less time than you would expect for the money, which is why we mention it here rather than pushing it.
And because each piece is made for you, getting the size right on the first attempt matters more than it would elsewhere. That is why our size guide publishes body measurements where the supplier provides them and garment measurements where it does not, and says clearly which is which. Most brands publish one number and let you work it out.
If the size is wrong anyway
Thirty days from delivery, unworn and unwashed with tags on. Email us and we will sort a swap or a refund.
To be straight about who pays for what: on a size swap you cover the postage sending the original back, and we cover shipping the replacement out to you. If the fault is ours, meaning a wrong item, a flaw, or a print that is not right, we cover both directions. We would rather write that plainly than bury it in a policy page.
The trade, stated once
You wait nine to eleven days instead of two. In exchange, nothing you buy was made on a guess, nothing sold out before you got there, and nothing identical to yours is sitting in a warehouse waiting to be marked down and destroyed.
Whether that is a good trade depends on what you are buying and when you need it. For a set you intend to train in for the next two years, we think it is. For something you need this weekend, it is not.
If it sounds like the right trade, the Terre Collection is where most people start, in sage, clay and sand, across racerback bras and high rise leggings.