Ordering Merch for a Music Tour: Stock, Sizes and Timing
By The Velocity Wear Team
Work backwards from the first show, not the last. Screen printing runs around 10-15 working days from artwork approval, more complex jobs nearer 15-20, and tracked UK delivery adds roughly 2-5 working days on top. Production starts when the artwork is approved, so if the designer is still tweaking the back print, the clock has not started. Miss night one and you lose the merch income from every date until the boxes catch up with you, which on a touring schedule usually means never.
The Deadline Is Load-In On Night One
Touring parties routinely plan merch against the announcement date or the album release, which are marketing dates rather than logistics dates. The only date that matters is the first time you need to put a box on a table. Set that, subtract delivery, subtract production, and you have the artwork approval date. Then put a couple of weeks in front of it for revisions, because band artwork goes through more opinions than corporate artwork ever does.
If the tour opens abroad, add the shipping leg and treat the last UK date before departure as the true delivery target.
Restocking Mid-Tour Is Effectively Impossible
This is the trap. On a three-week run, a reorder placed after the first weekend will not arrive before the last night. The production window alone eats most of the tour, and you also need a fixed address that will still have someone at it when the box lands. If you want a mid-tour restock, it has to be ordered before you leave and held by somebody who can post it on to a mid-tour venue or a friendly promoter.
The practical version of this is to order the whole run upfront and consolidate it into one order, which also takes you further into the bulk discount, reaching up to around 40% as quantities rise. One order, one setup, one lead time.
Judging The Size Curve
The middle sizes sell out first at almost every merch table, and the extremes sit in the box for the whole tour. Weight the run heavily towards medium and large, carry a meaningful number of extra large, and keep small and the largest sizes as a deliberate minority rather than an even split. If you have sold merch online before, your own order history is a far better guide than any generic advice, including this paragraph.
Offer a genuinely wide size range even where the volumes are small. Turning someone away at the table because you only printed to XL is a bad look and a lost sale in the same moment.
- Set the merch deadline as load-in for the first date, then subtract delivery and production from it.
- Order the full tour quantity in one run rather than planning a restock you will not receive in time.
- Weight the size curve towards the middle, but stock the extremes so nobody is turned away.
- Keep the core design undated so unsold stock still sells online after the tour ends.
- Pack a float, a charged card reader, and one of each size in the van rather than the trailer.
Tour Dates On The Back: The Dead Stock Problem
A printed date-back is a classic and fans love it. It is also the fastest way to turn unsold stock into landfill, because a shirt listing a tour that finished in October is a hard sell in November. The workable compromise is two designs: an undated core shirt that carries the bulk of the run and keeps selling online indefinitely, and a smaller dated print positioned as the limited one. That framing is honest, it is what fans actually want, and it protects you from a pallet of unsellable cotton.
If a routing change lands after artwork approval, you are reprinting. Confirm the dates with the agent before artwork goes anywhere near sign-off.
Which Print Method Suits A Merch Table
Screen printing is the natural fit for band tees: bold, limited colours, durable, cheapest at volume, with a setup cost per colour that pushes you towards a disciplined palette. DTF is the better answer for full-colour album artwork or photographic imagery, especially on shorter runs, since there is no per-colour setup and it works across cotton, blends and polyester. DTG gives a soft hand on cotton but suits smaller quantities. Sublimation is polyester only and light bases only, so it is a specialist choice for all-over prints rather than a merch table default.
“"Dated tour shirts sell out on the night and rot in a cupboard by Christmas. Print a few of them, not all of them."”
Hoodies, Space And What Earns Its Place In The Van
Hoodies carry a higher ticket than tees and tend to be the strongest single earner on a merch table, particularly on autumn and winter runs. They also take up several times the space in the van, and the boxes are heavier to carry up venue stairs at one in the morning. Bring a focused hoodie range in the sizes that actually move rather than a full spread, and keep the tee range wider. Velocity Wear works from a 20-piece minimum per order with sizes mixed freely, so you can split a run across garments without ordering twenty of each.
Lay the design out on the garment in the free Design Studio before you commit, and use the instant price calculator to test how the numbers move as you shift quantity between tees and hoodies.