Minimum Orders Explained for Events
By The Velocity Wear Team
The minimum is 50 pieces per design. Sizes mix freely inside those 50 at no extra cost, so a crew shirt can run from extra small to 3XL in one order. What counts separately is each distinct design, and each colourway that needs its own screens, which is the rule that decides whether an event is placing one order or three.
How does the 50-piece minimum work for an event?
Take one design, any mix of sizes, fifty pieces, and you have a valid order. That is genuinely all there is to it. The complication only appears when an event has more than one design in mind. The events and festivals page shows what events usually order, and the wholesale page sets out the rule across the whole range.
Most events clear 50 without noticing on crew kit alone, once stewards, bar staff, production and volunteers are counted. The events that struggle are small ones where the entire team is twelve people, and the answer there is to buy the 50 and keep the surplus for the next edition.
Do crew and merch count as one order?
Only if the design is identical. A crew shirt with STAFF on the back and a merch shirt without it are two designs, so that is 100 pieces rather than 50. Events routinely discover this after the budget is set.
There are ways around it that do not cost anything. Print one design and distinguish crew by garment colour where the colour is a stock choice rather than a new screen set. Or give the crew a cap or a lanyard as the differentiator and let everyone wear the same shirt. Both are common, and both keep the order at one design.
Can you mix sizes and colours inside the 50?
Sizes, always. Colours, it depends on the decoration method and whether a colourway needs its own screens set up. This is worth asking at the quote stage rather than assuming either way.
- Sizes mix freely with no minimum per size, so a single 3XL alongside thirty mediums is fine.
- Garment colours may be combinable within a design depending on how the artwork is applied.
- Any colourway that requires its own screens is counted as a separate design for the minimum.
- Print colour changes within the same artwork are a specification question, so raise them early.
Our guide to what events pay for branded clothing shows how the number of designs feeds straight into the budget, since each one carries its own 50.
What if the event only needs 30 crew shirts?
Buy 50 and use the other 20 deliberately. For a recurring event they become next year's stock, replacements for pieces that get ruined, and cover for people added to the rota at short notice. Keep the design free of a year or a date and they stay usable indefinitely.
For a genuine one-off, the surplus is still not wasted. Twenty spare shirts sell on the merch stall, go to the volunteers who turned up unbooked, or go to partners and suppliers. The unit price at 50 is the entry rate, and discounts of up to 35% only appear at much larger volumes, so there is no saving to chase by trying to order fewer.
It is also worth planning a second event into the first order. Two editions of the same event, ordered together, reach a better tier and arrive in one dye lot, which is exactly the approach our planner's guide to events clothing recommends for anything that repeats.
A useful compromise on the design count is to keep one garment and vary what is added around it. Lanyards, armbands or a different cap distinguish crew from the public without creating a second design, and they can be bought in whatever quantity suits. The shirt stays a single run of 50, and the people who need to be identifiable on site still are.
