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If shirts have to be ready for a January intake, order in November. Production is 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, and the last two weeks of December take working days out of that count in a way a calendar view hides. Ordering in the first week of January means shirts in late January, by which point the rush you were kitting out has already started.
What does the festive shutdown do to the count?
A lead time quoted in working days is not the same as a lead time in calendar days, and December is where that gap becomes expensive. Between the public holidays and the days most operations close around them, the last fortnight of the year can contain fewer than half the working days a normal fortnight does. Transit slows for the same reason. So a build that takes three calendar weeks in October can take five across the turn of the year.
The way to sidestep it entirely is to have the shirts delivered before the shutdown rather than through it. Approve artwork in the first half of November, take delivery in early December, and store the cartons. You are trading a few weeks of shelf space for complete certainty on a date you cannot move.
How big should the first run be?
January volumes are a guess, because you are ordering against people who have not signed up yet. The minimum is 50 pieces per design with sizes mixed freely inside it, so 50 is the floor you can test at. That is the right number if this is a new programme and you genuinely do not know the uptake.
If it is a repeat of something you ran last year, use last year's actuals and go up a tier deliberately, because the price steps at 50 to 99, 100 to 249, 250 to 499, 500 to 999 and 1,000 plus, and the discount reaches 35% off the 50-piece rate at the top. A gym ordering 90 shirts is paying the entry rate for the sake of ten pieces. From-prices, starting at £11 for t-shirts, are on the wholesale t-shirts page.
Should the design carry the year?
Almost never. A shirt printed with a specific year is a shirt you cannot reorder, cannot carry into February and cannot sell in the summer. For a January campaign, the shirt is usually doing brand work rather than commemorating an event, and a clean logo or slogan design survives the whole year. Keep the dated version for the things that genuinely are once-off, like a specific event with its own name.
The same logic applies to colourways. Every colourway that needs its own screens is a separate run of 50, so a three-colour January launch is a 150-piece commitment before you have sold anything. Launch on one colour, see what moves, and add the second in February when you have data instead of hope.
Is there time to sample in November?
Yes, and November is exactly when to do it. The £150 sample is credited against the bulk order, so for a buyer who proceeds it is not a separate cost so much as a deposit. In a compressed seasonal window it does one important thing: it removes the possibility of a surprise after the point at which a redo is impossible. Full details are on the samples page.
Order it in October if you can, so that any change to the artwork happens before the production booking rather than after it. The sequence from enquiry through to delivery, and where the sample slots into it, is set out in your first bulk t-shirt order. If you are also running a December product, plan the two together using the deadline maths in ordering t-shirts for Christmas, because they share a production window.
