Reading a Wholesale Quote for T-Shirts
By The Velocity Wear Team
A wholesale t-shirt quote breaks into four parts: the blank garment, the decoration, any private label work, and freight. Our t-shirts start at $13 a piece at the 50-piece minimum, and that figure is the blank plus a standard print. Anything the quote does not name — extra print positions, woven labels, individual bagging — is a line you should ask about before you approve it.
What is actually inside the per-piece price?
The unit price covers the blank and the decoration you specified, nothing more. The blanks we quote run 150–240 GSM combed ring-spun cotton in regular or boxy fits, and the weight you pick moves the number more than the artwork does. A 150 GSM tee and a 240 GSM tee are genuinely different garments with different costs, so a quote that never states the GSM is not really a quote yet. The wholesale t-shirts page sets out the from-price and the fabric range next to each other.
Decoration is priced by method and by position, not by how complicated the design looks. Screen printing carries a setup per colour per position, which is why a one-colour chest print costs less to run than a four-colour back. DTF has no screens, so a photographic front runs at the same cost as a flat logo. Embroidery is priced on stitch count. Ask which method the quote assumed, because two suppliers pricing the same shirt may well have assumed different ones.
What sits outside the unit price?
Four things usually sit outside it. A sample is £150, credited back against the bulk order once you place it. Private label work — woven neck labels, tear-out labels, swing tags, custom packaging — is quoted separately because it is separate production. Individual poly bagging is a per-piece handling charge. Freight to the UK, the USA or Europe depends on weight and destination, so it lands as its own line instead of being smeared across the garment price.
None of that is hidden, but a quote that hands you one number and nothing else hides it by accident. Ask for the breakdown in writing. If you are trying to reach a full landed figure rather than a per-piece one, budgeting a bulk t-shirt order works through the whole sum in order.
Why do two quotes for the same shirt differ so much?
Almost always because they are not the same shirt. One may be 150 GSM and the other 240. One may include setup and the other add it after approval. One may be ex-works and the other delivered to your door. Quantity tiers differ too: ours step at 50–99, 100–249, 250–499, 500–999 and 1,000+, so a quote drawn at 100 pieces is not comparable with one drawn at 250. Our pricing page shows where those steps fall, which lets you line two quotes up at the same quantity before you judge them.
The other common gap is what happens at the top of the range. Discounts on our runs reach up to 35% against the 50-piece rate, and a supplier quoting one flat figure at every quantity is either loading the small runs or has not costed the large ones. Where the money goes in bulk t-shirt pricing explains the cost structure sitting underneath those tiers.
What should you ask before approving it?
Five questions settle most quotes. What GSM is the blank. Which decoration method, and how many positions. Which quantity tier is this priced at. Is freight included, and to where. What is the lead time from artwork approval — on our runs that is 10–15 working days in production, with transit on top. Get those five answered in writing and the quote stops being a number and becomes a plan you can hold someone to.
One more step is worth taking before you sign. Ask for the quote to be restated at the quantity you are realistically going to order, not the one you first asked about. Buyers often request a price for 50 to see the entry point and then place an order for 120, which sits in a different tier entirely. Having both figures on the same document means the quantity decision gets made against real numbers rather than a guess at what the discount might be worth, and it gives whoever approves the spend something to compare.
