How Bulk T-Shirts Are Packed
By The Velocity Wear Team
Bulk t-shirts arrive folded in cartons, with the option of individual polythene bagging and of packing by size rather than mixed. Cartons are labelled with the contents. On a larger order the cartons come in on a pallet. All of this is decided at quote stage, because repacking a thousand shirts after delivery is a day of somebody's life.
Should the shirts be individually bagged?
Bag them if they are going to be sold, shipped onward individually, handled in a van, or stored for months. A polythene bag keeps a folded shirt clean and creased the way it left the factory, which matters when the next person to open it is a customer. We supply polythene bags as a quoted item alongside the garments.
Skip the bagging if the shirts are being handed out on the day, worn immediately, or issued to staff from a stockroom. In that case the bags are an extra line on the quote and an extra job for whoever opens the boxes. Be honest about which situation you are in rather than defaulting to the more expensive option.
What is a size run, and why does it matter?
A size run means each carton contains a mix of sizes, usually in a fixed ratio. Packed by size means each carton holds one size only. Both are normal, and which you want depends entirely on what happens next at your end.
Packed by size suits a stockroom, a merch table, a retail operation and anyone picking individual orders, because you open one box to find the size you need. A mixed size run suits distribution to multiple locations, where each site wants a representative spread and nobody wants to open eight cartons to build one. Tell us which you want and the cartons are labelled accordingly. Merch tables in particular benefit from size-packed cartons, which is why it comes up in ordering t-shirts for tour season.
What actually arrives?
Cartons, labelled with what is inside them, and on a larger order those cartons arrive banded on a pallet. Two practical questions are worth answering before delivery rather than during it: can the vehicle get to your address, and is there anyone there to receive a pallet. A delivery that cannot be accepted goes back to a depot, and that is the most avoidable delay in the whole process.
Before you sign, do the arithmetic. Count the cartons against the delivery note, check the labelling matches the quantities you ordered, and open at least one carton from the middle of the pallet rather than the one on top. What to look at once it is open is covered in quality checks on bulk t-shirts.
What should you tell us at quote stage?
Whether you want individual bagging, whether cartons should be size-packed or mixed, whether the order is splitting across more than one address, and anything unusual about the delivery point such as restricted access hours or no forklift. Each of those is trivial to arrange in advance and expensive to fix afterwards.
Volume also changes the picture. At the 50-piece minimum you are dealing with a small number of cartons and the packing decision is minor. At a thousand pieces it is a logistics decision. Our t-shirts start at $13 a piece at that 50-piece minimum, with the discount rising to a ceiling of 35% across the tiers from 50 to 99 up to 1,000 plus. From-prices are on the wholesale t-shirts page, and the packing and labelling terms are defined in the glossary.
