Labels and Packaging for Bulk Polo Shirts
By The Velocity Wear Team
On a bulk polo order you can replace the neck label with a woven one to your own artwork, use a printed tear-out tab instead, add a care and composition label in the side seam, hang a swing tag from the placket, and have every piece folded and bagged individually. All of it is available at the 50-piece minimum rather than only at high volume.
Woven label or tear-out tab?
A woven label is the traditional choice: fabric, stitched into the neck, with your mark woven into the weave rather than printed on top. It reads as a proper product and it lasts as long as the shirt. A tear-out tab is printed and perforated so the wearer can remove it, which suits anyone who finds a neck label irritating and is increasingly what sportswear brands specify. The trade-off is simple — the woven label is permanent branding, the tear-out tab is comfort. Retail lines usually take the woven one.
What has to be on a label by law?
Separate the branding from the compliance. The decorative neck label carries your mark; a second label, usually in the side seam, carries fibre composition, care instructions and size. Keeping them apart means you can change the look of the brand label without touching the information label, and it stops a busy neck label becoming unreadable. Tell us the market you are selling into when you place the order, since that is what determines what the information label has to say.
What about swing tags and hangers?
Swing tags attach to the placket or a side-seam loop and are where the price, the barcode and any story about the product live. If the shirts are going to a shop or a stockist, the tag needs the information the till needs, so check the barcode format before the tags are printed rather than after. Hangers are usually a retailer decision rather than a manufacturing one, because they take a surprising amount of carton space and most shops already have their own.
How do the pieces arrive?
Folded, counted and cartoned, and individually bagged if you ask for it. Individual bagging is worth it when the shirts go straight onto a shelf or into a fulfilment operation, or when the order will be stored for a long time before it is all used. It is unnecessary when fifty shirts are being handed out at a single event next week. Ask for cartons labelled by size either way, because that one detail saves whoever receives the delivery an afternoon. Options are listed with the garment on the wholesale polo shirts page.
What does this add to the cost and the timeline?
Each element is a separate item on the quote — labels, tags, bagging — and each is a handling pass in production, so a fully private-labelled and bagged order sits at the longer end of the 10 to 15 working day window rather than the shorter one. The volume bands still apply on top, reaching up to 35% below the fifty-piece price at the highest tier, and label costs fall with quantity in the same way. Figures sit on the pricing page, and there is more on presenting a finished product in clothing brands: ordering polo shirts in bulk.
