How Do I Order if I Do Not Know My Quantities?
By The Velocity Wear Team
Order the number you are confident about rather than the number you are hoping for. The minimum is twenty pieces per order with sizes mixed freely, so a cautious first run is genuinely viable. The thing worth avoiding is chopping one known requirement into several small orders, because that pays setup more than once and risks a shade difference between batches.
The Two Ways This Goes Wrong
Over-ordering leaves you with a box you paid for, stored somewhere you needed for something else, in the sizes nobody wanted. Under-ordering means going back for a second run, which can mean paying setup again, waiting through another production window, and receiving garments that may not match the first batch exactly. Neither is a disaster. But they fail differently, and knowing which failure you can live with is most of the decision.
Get Commitments Before You Get Quantities
For anything sold or distributed to individuals, a society hoodie, a team kit, a merch drop, collect names and sizes before you print. A form with a closing date takes less effort than the guessing it replaces, and it converts an estimate into a list. The people who do not respond by the deadline are the same people who will not respond after the delivery arrives, so build the order around the ones who did. If you want a buffer for latecomers, add it consciously rather than by inflating everyone's estimate.
The Middle Always Carries the Order
Where you have to guess, weight the middle sizes heavily and keep the extremes thin. The instinctive approach, an even spread across every size, is almost always wrong and produces both a shortage and a surplus at once. Note also whether you are ordering unisex or fitted cuts, because the same person takes different sizes in each and a group told only the number will report the wrong one.
- Start from confirmed names and sizes, not from headcount, and treat everything else as a buffer decision.
- Add spares as a deliberate line, sized to expected new starters or latecomers rather than to optimism.
- Weight medium and large; order the extremes in ones and twos unless you know otherwise.
- Check what the next quantity band does to your cost per piece before you finalise, since a few more pieces sometimes costs almost nothing.
- Ask what a repeat run would cost, so you know the real price of being wrong in either direction.
When Over-Ordering Is the Right Call
For uniform, buy ahead. New starters arrive, garments get damaged, and a top-up run months later may come from a different dye lot, so the spare polo bought today is the one that still matches in a year. The same applies to anything where consistency across a group is the whole point. Bulk discounts reach up to around 40% as quantities rise, which means the spares are usually the cheapest pieces in the order.
When Spares Turn Into Waste
Be ruthless about anything dated. A print carrying a year, an event name, a season, a fixture list or a sponsor who might not renew converts a leftover garment into a write-off the moment the date passes. If you want a design you can safely over-order, take the year off it. That single edit is the difference between spares you will use next term and a box you will quietly recycle. It is also the least glamorous piece of advice in this whole article and the one that saves the most money.
“"Order for the people who replied. The ones who did not reply will still not have replied when the box arrives."”
Ask the Reorder Question Before the First Order
Find out, before you place anything, whether a second run repeats the setup cost and whether the artwork is kept on file. If it is, then splitting an order becomes much less painful and a conservative first run is an easy decision. If it is not, the arithmetic pushes you towards a single consolidated order. It is the same question that separates two quotes from each other, and it is worth asking for exactly the same reason.
Timing Is Part of the Quantity Decision
Production starts at artwork approval, not at order placement, and screen printing and embroidery typically run around 10-15 working days from that point, with sublimation and complex jobs nearer 15-20. UK tracked delivery normally adds 2-5 working days after dispatch. If your event or term date is tight, an under-order cannot be fixed in time, which shifts the balance towards buying the buffer now. If the deadline is comfortable, a smaller first run and a considered second one is perfectly sensible.
See the Bands Before You Commit
The free instant price calculator shows live pricing as you change garment, method and quantity, so you can see where the discount steps actually sit for your job instead of estimating them. Very often the answer is that going from an awkward number up to the next band costs less than you expected, which turns an agonising quantity decision into an easy one.