T-Shirts for Events: size splits
By The Velocity Wear Team
Event t-shirt orders split freely across sizes inside the 50-piece minimum, and they split two different ways: crew sizing you can collect by name, and merch sizing you have to predict. The reliable approach is to allocate crew shirts exactly, then weight the merch curve towards the middle sizes, because a stall that runs out of medium at noon has effectively run out entirely.
How do you split sizes when you cannot ask the wearers?
You weight the curve rather than spreading it evenly. A flat split across six sizes looks fair on a spreadsheet and fails in practice, because demand is not flat - it clusters around the middle. Put the bulk of the run into medium and large, keep small and extra large meaningful but smaller, and take the extremes only in token quantities. The shirts you fail to sell are pure loss on an event, so the curve should be shaped to sell out rather than to serve everyone.
How is crew sizing different?
Crew you can name, which means you can size properly. Collect sizes with the rota rather than separately, because the rota is the one document everyone fills in. Add a handful of spares in the middle sizes for last-minute volunteers and for the person who spills something on theirs during setup. Crew shirts also tend to be worn hard over long days, so a heavier weight from the 150-240 GSM range often makes sense even where merch is lighter - that is a design decision covered on the events and festivals page.
What changes if the fit is boxy?
The whole curve shifts. A boxy cut is wider across the chest and shorter in the body than a regular fit, so wearers who take a large in one will often want a medium in the other. If your merch is a boxy streetwear cut, say so clearly at the stall and put a measurement chart on the table, because buyers who guess from letters return shirts they cannot return at an event. Boxy t-shirt fit goes into how those cuts actually measure up.
What do you do with the leftovers?
Plan for them before you order rather than after. Undated artwork sells online after the event or at the next date; artwork with a specific date on it does not. That single design decision is the difference between surplus stock and stock you can shift. The other lever is quantity: order what you are confident of selling plus a modest margin, and accept that selling out is a better outcome than covering every possible buyer. Event t-shirt cost shows how the per-piece figure changes if you do decide to stretch the quantity.
How do you record the split for next time?
Count what is left by size at the end of the day, before anything gets boxed up and forgotten. That list is the most valuable piece of data an event produces, because it tells you exactly where your curve was wrong and by how much. Two events of that record make the third order genuinely accurate. The wholesale t-shirts page is where to start the next one, and sizes can be mixed freely inside the 50 however the numbers come out.
