Wholesale Polythene Bags: cost
By The Velocity Wear Team
Printed polythene bags are quoted per job rather than sold from a published unit price, because the size and the print specification move the cost far more than the bag itself does. What is fixed is the structure around the quote: a minimum of 50 pieces per design, tiered pricing that falls as quantity rises to a ceiling of 35% off the 50-piece rate, and a £150 sample credited against the bulk order.
What drives the price of a printed polythene bag?
Three things, in roughly this order. Size comes first, since a bag sized for a folded t-shirt and a bag sized for a winter coat are different amounts of material. Print comes second: how many colours, how large the printed area is, and whether the design sits on one face or both. Quantity comes third and is the lever you control most easily. Everything else — the closure style, whether the bag carries a printed warning, how the bags are packed for transit — is a rounding adjustment on top.
That is why a specific figure per bag is not published anywhere on the site, including the polythene bags page. Quoting one would mean assuming a size and a print, and the assumption would be wrong for most jobs. Send the dimensions of what goes inside and a rough idea of the artwork and the number comes back quickly. The rest of the wholesale range is priced the same way wherever the specification varies that widely.
How much does the quantity change the unit price?
The tiers are 50–99, 100–249, 250–499, 500–999 and 1,000+, and the drop from the smallest to the largest reaches up to 35%. Packaging is one of the few lines where buying deep is genuinely low risk, because a printed bag with no date and no season on it will still be usable next year. If your brand mark is stable, the top tier is usually the right place to sit.
The counter-argument is storage. Bags take up more shelf than people expect once they arrive, and a year of stock in a spare room is a real cost even if it never appears on an invoice. Weigh the tier saving against the space before committing, and split the run across two sizes if the saving is marginal.
What is not in the bag price?
Delivery is separate and depends where it goes — we ship to the UK, USA and Europe, and invoice in seven currencies. The £150 sample is separate too, although it comes off the bulk invoice when you proceed. If the bags are going out alongside garments, price the whole parcel rather than the bag on its own; the arithmetic for that is laid out in landed cost explained.
Artwork preparation is the other line people forget. A print-ready file costs nothing to process; a logo pulled off a website at screen resolution needs rebuilding before it can be printed at bag scale, and that is time somebody pays for. Sorting the file out first is the simplest way to keep a quote lean.
Where do the savings actually come from?
Simplifying the print, not haggling the bag. Dropping a second print colour or moving a design from two faces to one changes the quote meaningfully; arguing over the film does not. The same logic applies to garment decoration, which is why how many colours your design should have is worth reading before you finalise packaging artwork as well.
The second saving is standardising sizes. Three bag sizes that cover everything you sell will always beat six that cover it perfectly, because each size carries its own minimum of 50 and its own setup. Consolidation is usually worth a slightly loose fit on the edge cases.
