Minimum Order for Wholesale Polo Shirts
By The Velocity Wear Team
The minimum order for wholesale polo shirts is 50 pieces per design, and the sizes inside those fifty are yours to mix however you want. What counts as a separate design is the part worth reading twice: a change of garment colour or of artwork starts a new count of fifty, while a change of size does not.
What counts as one design?
One garment body, in one colour, with one set of artwork in one set of positions. Fifty navy polos with your logo on the left chest is a design, and it can be five extra-smalls and forty-five extra-larges if that is what your team looks like. Change the body colour to stone and you have started a second design, because it is different cloth and, for a screen print, its own screens. Change the artwork — a different department name on the back, a second version of the logo — and the same applies.
What does not start a new fifty?
- Sizes. Any mix across the size range counts as the same design.
- Individual names, numbers or initials added to otherwise identical shirts.
- A men's and a women's cut of the same body in the same colour and artwork, where both cuts are offered.
- Different ink or thread colour on the same artwork is a judgement call — ask, because it sometimes does and sometimes does not.
What if your team is smaller than fifty?
Most buyers with twenty or thirty people still order fifty, and treat the balance as a stock box for new starters, replacements and the shirts that never come back. That is usually the right call, because a restock is itself another fifty and you would rather spend that money once. The alternatives are to pool with a second site, a second team or a sister organisation under the same artwork, or to add other products to the same order — the quantity across the order is what sets your price band, even though each design still needs its own fifty.
How does the minimum interact with the price bands?
Fifty is where the from-price of $18 a piece applies. Above it the bands step at 100, 250, 500 and 1,000 pieces, reaching up to 35% below the fifty-piece price. Two colourways of fifty each are two designs, but a hundred pieces for pricing, which is why buyers who want a second colour are usually better placing both at once than six months apart. The bands themselves are on the pricing page, and the garment options at each on the wholesale polo shirts page.
Why is there a minimum at all?
Because the setup work does not shrink with the order. Screens are burned, embroidery is digitised and a machine is threaded and tested whether the run is five pieces or five hundred, and below fifty that fixed work swamps the garment cost. A minimum is what keeps the per-piece price honest rather than loading a small run with a setup fee that dwarfs it. If you want to see the garment before committing, the route is a £150 sample, credited against the bulk order, rather than a short run. There is more on what to check on that sample in sampling polo shirts before a bulk order.
How do you build fifty pieces that get used?
Start from the people who will definitely wear one, then decide what the balance is for. A replacement pool, new starters, a box for an event, spares for the people who lose things — each of those is a real use, and naming it stops the extra shirts becoming a cupboard nobody opens. Weight the split towards the middle sizes, because unknown future wearers cluster there, and resist ordering to a rota that will have changed by the time the box is half empty.
Write down what you ordered and what you wished you had ordered. The second fifty is a far better order than the first one when somebody kept a note, and the note takes five minutes.
