Briefing a Supplier for T-Shirts
By The Velocity Wear Team
A good t-shirt brief is eight lines long and answers eight questions: garment, fabric weight, fit, quantity, colours, decoration method, print locations and delivery destination. Add a deadline and your artwork and the first quote will be the quote you pay. Almost every revised quote traces back to one of those eight lines being missing from the first message.
What does a supplier need in order to quote accurately?
Start with the garment and the specification. T-shirt, and then the weight and the cut: our range is 150 to 240 GSM combed ring-spun cotton in regular and boxy fits, and those choices change both the feel and the price. If you do not know which weight you want, say what the shirt is for and we will recommend one rather than guess.
Then the numbers. The quantity, the size split if you have it, and the number of colourways. Each design and each colourway needing its own screens is its own run of 50, so a brief that says one hundred shirts in three colours is really three runs, not one. Then the decoration: screen print, DTF, embroidery, 3D puff or sublimation, and how many locations. Finally, where it is going and when you need it. Pricing tiers step at 50 to 99, 100 to 249, 250 to 499, 500 to 999 and 1,000 plus, up to 35% off the 50-piece rate, and they are set out on the pricing page.
What artwork should you send?
Vector files if you have them, at the size you want them printed or larger. Vector scales without losing an edge, which matters on a back print that might be 30 centimetres wide. If all you have is a raster file, send the largest version that exists rather than the one off your website, and tell us so we can flag anything that will not hold up.
Include Pantone solid coated references written out as numbers, not as a screenshot of a colour. Say which colour is genuinely your brand colour and which ones just need to look right, because that tells us where to spend the effort. The full picture on what colour matching can and cannot do is in colour matching bulk t-shirts.
What causes a quote to be revised later?
Four things, in rough order of frequency. Adding a print location after the fact, because each location is its own setup. Splitting one design into two colourways, which turns one run of 50 into two. Discovering that the artwork needs redrawing, which is not a price change so much as a delay. And a delivery detail that arrives late, such as a second address or a destination that changes the shipping.
None of those are surprises to a supplier. They are simply information that arrived after the number was calculated. If you are not sure about one of them, say so in the brief rather than leaving it out, and ask for the quote both ways. A quote with two scenarios on it is more useful than a quote that has to be redone.
What should the brief not contain?
It does not need a mockup. Many buyers spend an evening placing their logo on a stock photo of a shirt, and it rarely helps, because the placement will be set properly at artwork stage anyway. Send the logo file and describe where you want it instead.
It also does not need a long explanation of your organisation. What matters is the specification, the quantity and the date. One more thing worth including: say whether you want a sample. The £150 fee is credited against the bulk order, and knowing at the brief stage whether you intend to sample lets the timeline be planned around it rather than extended by it. Current from-prices, starting at $13 a piece at the 50-piece minimum, are on the wholesale t-shirts page, and the stages that follow the brief are set out in your first bulk t-shirt order.
