Wholesale Polo Shirts for Bands
By The Velocity Wear Team
A polo sits above a tour t-shirt in price and below a hoodie, and it sells to the part of an audience that wants merch they can wear to work. Polos start at $18 a piece at our 50-piece minimum, sizes mix freely, and a limited run of 50 is a realistic test before committing to a full tour quantity.
Does a polo work as band merch?
It works as a second item rather than a first. The t-shirt is the volume seller at a merch table and will stay that way. A polo earns its place by catching the buyer who already owns three band tees, or who wants something wearable outside a gig, and it carries a higher price point to match.
Keep the decoration restrained. An embroidered logo on the chest reads as a garment somebody chose; a large tour graphic across the front turns it into a t-shirt with a collar, which is a harder sell. Subtlety is the entire commercial argument for the item.
How many should a band order for a tour?
Start at the 50-piece minimum unless you have sell-through data from a previous run. A polo will not move at t-shirt rates, so a run sized like your t-shirt order is a run that comes home in a van. Fifty pieces across a tour is a genuine test, and the reorder can be deeper once you know the rate.
Weight the sizes towards M, L and XL, keep S and XXL small, and remember that merch buyers size for how they want the garment to sit rather than to a measurement. Our tour merch t-shirt guide covers sell-through and size splits for the item you will sell most of.
What about crew polos?
Crew kit is a different design and therefore a different run of 50. It needs to be identifiable at a venue rather than desirable, so a strong colour and a clear mark matter more than the finish. Some bands solve this by using the same garment in a different colourway — bear in mind that each colourway needing its own screens counts as its own design with its own minimum.
If crew and merch share a design exactly, they share a run, which is the only way to combine them. That is worth considering for a small operation where the distinction is mostly internal anyway.
What does it cost and how long does it take?
From $18 a piece at 50, with the discount rising to up to 35% as quantity increases through the tiers at 50–99, 100–249, 250–499, 500–999 and 1,000 plus. Production is 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, before delivery transit — which on a tour schedule means ordering before rehearsals, not during them. A £150 sample is credited against the bulk order.
See the knits, collars and plackets on our polo shirts page, and the wider merch picture on the bands and music page. For how embroidery behaves on a piqué knit before you settle the artwork, the piqué, fit and embroidery guide is the place to start.
How should a polo be priced at the merch table?
Above the t-shirt and below the hoodie, with the gap wide enough that the buyer understands they are choosing a different kind of item rather than paying extra for the same one. If the polo is only a couple of pounds more than a tee, most people take the tee and the run sits there all tour.
Put the two next to each other on the table rather than hiding the polos behind the stack. The item sells on being touched — the weight of the knit and the collar are the argument — and a folded pile that nobody picks up will not move regardless of what it costs.
