Gyms: Ordering Polo Shirts in Bulk
By The Velocity Wear Team
Gym polo shirts start at $18 a piece at our 50-piece minimum, and sizes mix freely inside that 50. The main decision is the knit: a performance knit for floor staff who are moving all day, or a cotton piqué for reception and management where the garment is on show more than it is working. Most gyms end up specifying both.
Which knit suits gym staff?
Performance knits move moisture away from the skin and dry quickly, which matters for a trainer on the floor for eight hours. They also hold their shape through frequent washing, and frequent is the operative word — a gym polo is in the machine several times a week, not weekly. Cotton piqué is heavier, breathes well and looks more formal, which suits front desk and management.
The textured surface of a piqué knit hides light marks better than a flat jersey, which is a genuine advantage in a building full of chalk, rubber flooring and equipment grease. If you want one garment across the whole team, piqué is the safer compromise.
How should a gym split staff kit and member merch?
Keep them as separate designs and budget accordingly. Staff kit usually carries a small embroidered logo on the left chest, sometimes a role title on the back, and needs to be instantly recognisable across a busy floor. Member merch is a retail product and tends to want a larger printed mark. The 50-piece minimum is per design, so those are two orders of 50 unless the artwork is genuinely identical.
A practical sequence is staff first, members second. Staff numbers are known, the sizes are known, and the garments get worn immediately, which tells you how the knit holds up before you commit to a member run. Our polo shirts page lists the current from-price and the knit options.
What does the order actually cost?
The price starts at the $18 from-price at 50 pieces and falls as quantity rises, by up to 35% across the tiers at 50–99, 100–249, 250–499, 500–999 and 1,000 plus. Decoration adds to that: embroidery is charged on stitch area, so a compact chest logo costs less to run than a large back mark. A £150 sample, credited against the bulk order, is the sensible first step.
Allow 10 to 15 working days of production from the moment artwork is approved, then delivery transit on top. If the polos are meant to appear alongside a refurbishment or a launch, count that window backwards from the opening date. More on kit for fitness sites is on our gyms and fitness page.
Work out the cost per staff member rather than per shirt when you present the figure internally. Three polos each for a team of twenty is sixty pieces, which clears the minimum and sits in a better tier than a run of fifty — the extra ten pieces often cost less than the saving the tier produces. That is the kind of arithmetic worth doing before the quantity is fixed.
What should a gym specify on the order?
Four details that are easy to settle up front and awkward to change later.
- Collar and placket — a two or three button placket, and whether you want a contrast collar trim
- Decoration position and size, which the buyer's guide to collars and fabric covers in detail
- Sizes, including a realistic tail for larger and smaller staff rather than a flat range
- Whether the design changes between sites, since each variation is its own run of 50
Gyms running an office or head-office team alongside the floor staff often order a third version in a more formal finish. The approach to that is set out in our notes on office polo orders.
Order spares deliberately rather than hoping. Fitness teams turn over, shirts get damaged on equipment, and a polo that is issued twice a week wears out faster than office kit. Carrying a reserve weighted towards the middle sizes means a new trainer is in branded kit on their first shift instead of waiting for the next production run, which is the whole point of having a uniform in the first place.
