T-Shirts for Societies, Ordered Properly
By The Velocity Wear Team
A society t-shirt order starts at 50 pieces and $13 each, and the thing that decides whether it works is when you place it. Production takes 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, plus transit. Ordering in the first week of term means shirts arrive around week four, after the sign-ups you wanted them for. Place it over the summer instead and sell from stock.
When should a committee actually place the order?
Work backwards from the date the shirts need to be on people. Add transit, then 10 to 15 working days of production, then a week for artwork revisions, then however long your committee takes to agree a design, which is the longest number in the chain. For a freshers fair in late September, the artwork should be settled in July. Societies that miss this end up paying for an order that arrives when the enthusiasm has gone. The current per-piece prices are on our wholesale t-shirts page, and the same timing logic applies to school and leavers orders.
How does a committee fund 50 shirts up front?
Three routes, all used. Take pre-orders with payment at sign-up and place the order once you have covered the invoice. Use the society grant for the run and recover it on sales through the year. Or split it: the committee funds the 50, sells at a mark-up that clears the cost inside the first term, and the surplus funds the next thing. Because the discount rises with quantity, up to 35% at the top tiers, two societies ordering the same blank in the same colour can sometimes combine and both land a better price, provided the printed artwork is genuinely identical.
How do you collect sizes from sixty members?
Do not ask people their size in a group chat. Publish a form with the garment measurements on it, chest width flat and body length, and a deadline that is two weeks before you need to order. Then order to the shape of the responses rather than the responses themselves, because roughly a tenth of people who answer never pay and a similar number who never answer turn up wanting one. Sizes run XS to 3XL and mix freely inside the 50, so you can follow the form closely.
Can members have their names on the back?
Yes, and it is worth knowing what it does to the order. Individual names are a per-garment change, so they suit DTF or vinyl rather than screen printing, where every name would need its own screen. The front artwork stays one design and one run of 50; the names are added on top. It also removes any chance of reselling a leftover shirt, so only name the ones that are paid for. Artwork setup covers what files to send for both parts.
What about next year's committee?
Put the year on the sleeve, not the chest. A society tee with a big year across the front is unsellable in twelve months; the same shirt with the crest on the chest sells for three years. Keep the artwork files, the garment colour reference and the size split in the handover document, because the next committee will otherwise start from nothing and pay for a redesign they did not need.
What does the run actually cost a society?
Start at $13 a piece at 50 and work from there. Heavier fabric and extra print positions move it up, and quantity moves it down, with breaks at 100, 250, 500 and 1,000 and up to 35% off the 50-piece price at the largest runs. For a society, the honest figure to put in front of the committee is the total invoice rather than the unit price, because that is the number that has to be covered before the shirts exist. Divide it by the number of members who have actually paid, not the number on the mailing list, and the sale price writes itself.
