Hoodies for Gyms: cost
By The Velocity Wear Team
Custom hoodies for a gym start at $31 a piece at the 50-piece minimum, before decoration and delivery. The 50 can be any mix of sizes. The per-piece figure falls as quantity climbs through the tiers, to a ceiling of 35 per cent off the 50-piece price. Fabric weight is the other lever: brushed-back fleece runs 280 to 450 GSM, and the two ends price differently.
What moves the per-piece price for a gym order?
Three things, in order of size. Quantity first: the tiers run 50 to 99, 100 to 249, 250 to 499, 500 to 999 and 1,000 plus, and the discount grows at each step. Fabric weight second: a 450 GSM fleece uses far more yarn than a 280 GSM one and that gap is in every piece. Decoration third: an embroidered chest logo and a large multi-colour back print are very different amounts of work, and each position is costed separately.
What does not move it much is how complicated your logo looks on screen. What matters to a printer is the number of colours and the number of positions, not how intricate the shape is. A gym with a detailed crest in a single ink colour will often pay less than one with a simple wordmark in four. The current tiers sit on the wholesale hoodies page.
Do staff kit and member merch cost the same?
Per piece, if they are the same garment. In total, no, because they are usually two designs and the 50-piece minimum applies to each. A staff hoodie in club colours with a small embroidered mark and a member hoodie in heather grey with a big printed graphic are two runs of 50, two setups and two invoices. Gyms that want both on one budget normally run a single design and let the colour of the garment do the distinguishing between who is working and who is training.
There is a cost argument for combining them anyway. Two designs at 50 each is 100 pieces in total, which sits in the second tier, so both runs are priced better than a single 50 would be. Whether that offsets a second screen setup depends on the decoration, which is worth asking about explicitly rather than assuming. What each line in a quote covers is set out in budgeting a bulk hoodie order.
Where do gyms usually overspend?
On weight they do not need for staff, and on decoration positions nobody sees. Floor staff wearing a 450 GSM hoodie through a shift in a heated room take it off within an hour, and a heavy fleece takes a long time to dry when it is washed three times a week. The middle of the range does that job better and costs less. Meanwhile a second print position on a sleeve adds a full setup to every garment and is invisible in most of the photographs the gym will actually use.
The other overspend is ordering the size range evenly. A gym membership skews in ways an even split across seven sizes does not reflect, and the pieces that never move cost exactly as much as the ones that do. What gyms typically order, and what sells rather than sits, is covered in custom gym hoodies.
What should be in the total, not just the unit price?
- Decoration cost for each position on the garment.
- Screen setup per colour, or embroidery digitising as a one-off.
- The £150 sample, which is credited against the bulk order.
- Delivery, which rises with fleece weight as well as distance.
- Spares, because staff turnover in a gym is constant.
Add those, divide by the quantity, and you have the figure to plan with. If the hoodies are being sold to members rather than issued to staff, that same figure is the floor your retail price has to clear. Gym-specific kit options across garments are collected on our gyms and fitness page.
