T-Shirts for Agencies: samples
By The Velocity Wear Team
A t-shirt sample costs £150 and is credited against the bulk order that follows. For an agency it does two jobs at once: it proves the garment and the print before 50 pieces are committed, and it gives the client something physical to approve instead of a flat visual. Samples are never free, and skipping one moves all the risk onto the run.
Why does an agency need a physical sample?
Because a mock-up cannot show handle, drape or how a brand colour reads on fabric rather than on a backlit screen. A navy that looks right in the deck can sit differently against a garment dye, and a logo sized correctly in millimetres can look undersized on an actual chest panel. Those are cheap discoveries on one garment and expensive ones on a campaign run.
There is a client-management argument too. A client who has held the tee and signed off on it rarely reopens the decision afterwards. The sample meeting converts a subjective conversation into a yes.
What should the sample meeting cover?
Go through it in a fixed order so nothing gets waved past.
- Brand colour against the garment colour, checked in daylight rather than under office lighting
- Logo size and position on the body, viewed on a person, not flat on a table
- Handle of the print — how much the decoration changes the feel of the front panel
- Fabric weight and drape, and whether the 150–240 GSM blank matches what the client expects
- Collar rib and recovery, which is the first thing to look tired on a campaign tee
Write the outcome down in the meeting. A change requested verbally and not recorded is the most common reason a bulk run arrives with the wrong logo size.
How does the sample affect the campaign schedule?
It sits before artwork approval, and artwork approval is what starts the 10 to 15 working day production window. So the sample round is additional time, not time inside production, and it has to be scheduled backwards from the launch date along with transit. Trying to fit the sample in after the clock has started defeats the point of it.
If the decoration method is still open when the sample is ordered, settle it first — the decoration guide compares the options, and the sample should be decorated the way the campaign will be. The countdown itself is set out in the lead time guide.
Who should pay for the sample on a client job?
Put it in the budget explicitly rather than absorbing it. The £150 is credited against the bulk order, so on a campaign that proceeds the net effect is a cash-flow item rather than a cost, and a client who understands that rarely objects. Where a campaign might not proceed, the fee is what covers producing a one-off garment.
Blanks, fits and from-prices are on the wholesale t-shirts page, and the corporate page covers ongoing programmes where one sample can serve several intakes.
What happens to the sample afterwards?
Keep it. It becomes the reference garment for every run that follows, which matters when a client asks in six months whether the new batch matches the first. An approved sample in a drawer settles that conversation in a minute; a memory of a meeting does not.
It is also the garment to photograph for the internal case study, the pitch deck and the client's own channels, because it exists weeks before the bulk run does. Agencies that plan the shoot around the sample rather than the delivery get their content ready in time for the launch instead of after it.
Label it with the order reference and the date before it goes in a drawer. An unlabelled sample is just a shirt, and after two campaigns nobody can say which run it belongs to or what was changed after it was approved.
