What Schools Pay for Branded Clothing
By The Velocity Wear Team
At the 50-piece minimum, school kit starts at $13 for a t-shirt, $12 for a cap, $18 for a polo shirt and $31 for a hoodie, each with decoration included. Those are starting figures at the smallest quantity. A full year group takes the order into higher tiers, where the discount reaches up to 35% of the 50-piece price.
What does a school pay per piece?
The garment sets the floor. A printed tee for a sports day sits lowest on the list; a leavers hoodie is the most expensive of the everyday items because there is simply more fabric in it. Polos land in between and are what most schools buy in the largest volume, since they get worn far more often than anything commemorative.
What the from-price already includes matters as much as the number. Decoration is in it, so a quote elsewhere that looks lower may be for a blank garment with printing billed separately. The wholesale pricing page shows what sits inside each figure.
How far does the price drop as the year group grows?
The tiers are 50 to 99, 100 to 249, 250 to 499, 500 to 999 and 1,000 plus. A single form group sits at the bottom of that ladder. A whole year of 180 pupils lands two tiers up, and a multi-year order for a large secondary reaches the point where the discount is at its deepest. Because the discount is measured from the 50-piece price, the saving is real rather than a headline against an inflated list.
The practical consequence for a school is that combining orders pays. Two year groups buying the same hoodie in the same term is one run; the same two buying separately in different terms is two runs, each starting at the bottom tier.
What makes a leavers hoodie cost more than the from-price?
Three things, mostly. A name list on the back is extra decoration, and personalising individual garments is more work than printing one design 200 times. A second colour in the design can change the print setup. And a second colourway of the garment itself is a separate design against the minimum, so it does not share the first run's quantity.
Embroidery cost also scales with the size of the mark rather than the size of the garment, which is why a crest on a blazer pocket and a crest on a hoodie chest cost the same to stitch. That mechanism is explained in how embroidery stitch count affects cost.
Where does the budget go apart from the garment?
Delivery is separate from the build, so allow for transit on top of the per-piece figure. A physical sample is £150 and is credited against the bulk order, which is worth doing on anything a school is selling on to parents. And if the kit carries a woven neck label or a swing tag, those are quoted with the job rather than priced from a list.
The schools and leavers page sets out the garments most schools order, and the tiering logic is compared across products in how much does custom clothing cost.
