What Salons Pay for Branded Clothing
By The Velocity Wear Team
At the 50-piece minimum, polo shirts start at $18 a piece, t-shirts at $13, corporate uniforms at $20 and caps at $12. Towels, which most salons order alongside, are quoted per job rather than carrying a from-price. Prices fall as quantity rises, with up to 35 per cent off the 50-piece rate at the highest tier.
What does a salon uniform cost per piece?
The polo at $18 is the workhorse of the sector because it survives a full day on the floor and still looks presentable to a client in the chair. A t-shirt at $13 suits a barbershop with a less formal look, and a structured corporate uniform at $20 suits a spa or a front desk. Multiply by the number of pieces each stylist needs rather than by headcount, since one polo per person is a uniform that is never clean. How much does custom clothing cost covers the components behind the figure.
Why does bleach change which garment you buy?
Because a salon is the one workplace where the uniform is regularly attacked by chemicals. Bleach marks a dark garment permanently, and colour splashes show on a light one. Two practical routes exist: choose black and accept that bleach spotting will eventually retire the piece, or choose a mid-tone that hides colour splash better. Either way, budget for replacement more often than an office would, which is an argument for ordering further up the tiers. Custom uniforms for salons and barbershops covers the garment choices.
How much does 100 or 250 pieces save?
The tiers run 50 to 99, 100 to 249, 250 to 499, 500 to 999 and 1,000 upwards, with the discount reaching up to 35 per cent against the 50-piece price at the top. For a single salon that is a stretch, but a group with three or four sites reaches the higher tiers easily by ordering together rather than separately. Uniform designs also change slowly, so stock held is stock used rather than stock written off.
What about towels alongside the uniform?
Towels are quoted per job, because weight, size and decoration vary too much for a single from-price to mean anything. They are worth pricing at the same time as the uniform, since the artwork and the colour matching are shared work. Wholesale towels for salons and spas goes into what survives repeated washing. Start at the salons and barbers page or the wholesale overview for the full range.
What drives the total besides the garment itself?
Decoration choice, delivery and replacement rate. Embroidery is priced by stitch count, so a logo with a strapline under it costs materially more to stitch than the mark alone, and shrinking the strapline is often the easiest saving on the whole order. Delivery depends on where the boxes go. Replacement rate is the one salons underestimate, because a uniform exposed to bleach and colour does not last as long as the same shirt worn in an office.
A sample at £150, credited against the bulk order, is worth adding to the first order of a new garment for exactly that reason. Wash it the way the salon really washes, at the temperature the team actually uses, and you will know within a fortnight whether the piece is a two-year uniform or a one-season one.
Cost the uniform per stylist per year rather than per shirt. Three polos that last eighteen months work out cheaper over that period than two that are retired at six, even though the first order looks larger on paper. Salon owners who buy on the headline figure alone tend to reorder twice as often, and the second order never benefits from the tier the first one could have reached.
