Polo Shirts for Schools: size splits
By The Velocity Wear Team
Sizes can be mixed freely inside the 50-piece minimum, so the split costs nothing and is entirely yours to decide. Build it from a real headcount rather than a percentage table, weight your spares towards the middle sizes, and remember that a school cohort spans a wider range of bodies than an adult workplace does. Dead stock comes from guessing, not from quantity.
Where should the size data come from?
From the pupils, with a deadline and a default. A form that lists sizes against names, closes on a stated date and states that anyone who has not replied will be ordered a given size gets you a usable curve in a few days. Percentage rules borrowed from retail do not transfer to a school, because a Year 7 cohort and a Year 11 cohort have completely different shapes and the same table cannot describe both.
Offer a measurement rather than a label where you can. Polo fit varies by fabric, and a piqué cotton and a performance knit do not sit the same way on the same chest, so a centimetre figure travels better than a letter. The wholesale polo shirts page sets out which fabrics are available so you know which size guide applies.
How should the spares be weighted?
Towards the middle, and towards growth. The middle sizes cover the most people and are what a new starter is most likely to need. Growth matters in a school in a way it does not elsewhere: a pupil who took a size in September may not take it in June, so a spare one size up is more useful than a spare one size down. Keep the count small and deliberate rather than rounding every size up.
- Two or three spares in each of the most common sizes, not one of everything.
- A small allowance for new arrivals during the year the design stays unchanged.
- A note of what is left over, so the next order is corrected rather than repeated.
- Nothing at the extreme ends unless the headcount already showed demand there.
Ordering those spares inside the original run costs the garment price only, because the setup is already paid for. A top-up later is a separate order with its own minimum of 50 pieces, which is a disproportionate answer to three pupils needing a shirt. That arithmetic is the whole argument for getting the curve roughly right first time.
What do you do with the sizes that did not sell?
Hold them as next year stock if the design is not changing, and record them properly. An unworn polo in a cupboard is a new starter kit in September; the same polo forgotten in a cupboard is dead stock. Where the design is changing, use the leftovers as spares for the current cohort and let the range run down naturally rather than reordering to fill a gap that is about to disappear.
The schools and leavers page covers how the same cohort list drives hoodies and polos alike, and handing out polo shirts to a team explains the bagging and handout side once the boxes arrive. Getting the curve and the handout right together is what stops a term starting with a swap queue.
Does the size split change the price?
No. The 50-piece minimum is a piece count, so 50 shirts spread across eight sizes costs the same as 50 shirts in one size. What changes the price is quantity band and design count, not the shape of the curve, which means there is no cost reason to simplify a size split that genuinely needs eight sizes. Reordering school polo shirts covers how to carry a corrected curve into the following year.
