Minimum Orders Explained for Gyms
By The Velocity Wear Team
Production opens at fifty pieces of one design, and sizes can be mixed however you like inside that fifty. The detail that catches gyms out is the word design. A t-shirt and a hoodie carrying identical artwork are two designs. A black version and a grey version that need their own screens are two designs. Sizes, by contrast, cost you nothing to spread.
How does the fifty-piece minimum work for a gym?
Think of it as fifty pieces per production setup rather than fifty items per order. Everything that shares one garment, one colour and one artwork counts together. So fifty t-shirts split as six small, fourteen medium, eighteen large, ten extra large and two double extra large is a single valid order, and you pay nothing extra for using five sizes rather than one.
Where the count restarts is at the garment and the colourway. That is not an arbitrary rule; it reflects what actually happens in production, where each combination needs its own setup before a single piece is made. The gyms and fitness page shows the kit programmes clubs typically run, and the wholesale range lists what each product opens at.
Do staff kit and member merch count together?
Only if they are genuinely the same garment, colour and artwork. In practice they rarely are, because staff kit usually wants a different treatment from retail. A gym running black staff polos and a grey member t-shirt has two designs and needs fifty of each. A gym running the same t-shirt for both, with staff simply taking from the same stock, has one design and one fifty.
That second approach is worth considering for a smaller club. One design ordered at a hundred is cheaper per piece and simpler to manage than two designs ordered at fifty each, and nothing stops you differentiating staff by a second garment later once you know the demand is real. The background to how minimums work across the trade is in minimum order quantities explained.
What if a colourway needs its own screens?
Then it is a separate design and carries its own fifty. This surprises people, because the artwork has not changed. But printing the same logo onto a black garment and a white one is not the same job: the ink behaves differently, the underbase differs, and each garment colour requires its own setup on the press.
There are ways around it if budget is tight:
- Run one garment colour for the first order and add a second once you have sales data behind you.
- Use a single-colour mark that works on both light and dark bases, which reduces the setup difference.
- Put the variation into the garment rather than the print, keeping one artwork across the range.
- Combine staff and retail demand into one design to clear fifty comfortably rather than scraping it.
How do you reach fifty without over-ordering?
Presell, or count before you commit. A gym with a member base can take names for a hoodie drop before placing the order, which turns a speculative fifty into a mostly-sold fifty. Failing that, start with the garment that has the broadest appeal and the lowest entry price rather than the one with the highest margin, because unsold stock at $13 a piece is a much smaller problem than unsold stock at $53.
It also helps to remember that fifty is not a large number for anything a club actually uses. Staff wear through t-shirts. Members buy caps. What creates dead stock is not the minimum itself but ordering four designs at fifty each before knowing which one sells. Our note on what a fifty-piece minimum actually changes covers the mindset shift in more depth.
