Blank Hoodies UK: Buy Blanks or Get Them Made to Order?
By The Velocity Wear Team
There are two ways to get hoodies with your brand on them. Buy blank hoodies from a wholesaler and decorate them yourself or with a local printer. Or have a supplier make and decorate them for you. Both work. They suit very different businesses.
The case for blank hoodies
- You can buy small numbers, sometimes just a few pieces.
- If you own a heat press or work with a local printer, you control timing.
- It's great for testing designs or print-on-demand style selling.
- Stock brands are consistent, so reorders are easy.
The catch
Everyone else is using the same blanks. Customers who know clothing can often spot the familiar standard hoodies used by lots of merch sellers. That's fine for an event or a club. It's a problem if you're trying to build a brand that looks different and charges more.
The costs also stack up. Wholesale blank, plus shipping, plus printing, plus a relabel if you want your own neck label, plus your own time. By the time a hoodie is finished, the saving can disappear.
The case for made to order
- You choose the fabric weight, colour, fit and details, so the product is yours.
- Decoration, custom neck labels and packaging can be done in one place.
- One supplier, one invoice, one delivery. Far less admin.
- Per-piece cost falls properly at volume.
The catch
There's a minimum order and a lead time. With us, that's 20 pieces per design and 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval. If you need three hoodies tomorrow, made to order isn't the answer.
A simple way to decide
- 1If you need fewer than about 20 of a design, or you're testing lots of designs in tiny numbers, blanks and print-on-demand make sense.
- 2If you're selling hoodies as a brand and want them to feel different, go made to order.
- 3If you're ordering for a group, club or company and want it simple, made to order is usually less hassle.
- 4If you already own printing kit and have spare capacity, blanks may be cheaper for you specifically.
Quality control is on you with blanks
When you print blanks yourself, you're also the quality checker. Wonky placement, a print that's slightly too high on the XLs, a hoodie with a pulled thread: those are all yours to catch before they reach a customer. That's fine when you're printing ten. It's a real job when you're printing two hundred.
With made to order, you approve a proof and the finished pieces arrive decorated and checked. You still want to inspect a delivery when it arrives, but you're not running a small factory in your spare room.
Think about sizing consistency too
Stock blank brands publish size charts, and they're consistent. That's a plus. The minus is that their fit is their fit. If your audience wants a boxier body or shorter sleeves, you can't change it. Made to order lets you settle the fit once and repeat it on every drop, which is how a brand's hoodies start to feel recognisably theirs.
The in-between option
Plenty of brands start with blanks to prove demand, then move to made to order once a design is selling. That's a sensible path. When you switch, bring a hoodie you like as a reference, so the new version improves on it rather than just matching it.
If you're ready to move to your own hoodies, check the custom hoodies range, compare costs on the calculator, and get a sample next to the blank you've been using.
