Sampling T-Shirts Before a Bulk Order
By The Velocity Wear Team
A t-shirt sample costs £150 and that £150 is credited against your bulk order, so for anyone going ahead it is a deposit rather than an expense. Samples are never free. What you get is the actual garment with your actual artwork on it, which answers the questions a specification cannot: how the fabric feels, how the print sits, and whether the colour is what you pictured.
What does the £150 sample actually get you?
One finished piece, made the way the run will be made: the chosen blank at your chosen weight between 150 and 240 GSM, decorated with your approved artwork in the method you have picked, in the garment colour you have specified. It is not a mock-up image and not a plain blank with a sticker on it. Because it goes through the same process, it also surfaces anything awkward about the artwork before that awkwardness is repeated 500 times. The range is on our wholesale t-shirts page and the quantity tiers on the pricing page.
What should you check when it arrives?
Work through it deliberately. Hold it up to judge opacity in the garment colour. Check the print position against the shoulder seam and measure the width, because a centimetre out on a sample is a centimetre out on the whole run. Look at fine detail and small type, which is where embroidery and DTF both show their limits. Try it on, because fit is the thing photographs never settle. Then wash it hot and look again, which is the test almost nobody does and the one that predicts how the order ages.
Does sampling delay the bulk order?
Yes, and it should be planned rather than resented. The sample is produced and shipped, you assess it, and the 10 to 15 working day production window for the run starts after you approve. For a fixed deadline that means adding a stage to the calendar rather than squeezing one. If the date is immovable and the design is simple, ordering straight to bulk on an approved digital proof is a defensible decision. Lead times for bulk t-shirts shows where it fits in the chain.
When is a sample worth it, and when is it not?
Take one when the order is large enough that a mistake is expensive, when the shirt is being sold rather than given away, when the artwork has fine detail or an unusual colour, or when someone else has to sign off and would rather hold the thing. Skip it when the run is at the 50-piece minimum with a simple one-colour chest print on a standard garment you have ordered before, because the digital proof already answers the only open questions. Artwork setup explains what that proof covers.
Can you sample more than one option?
You can, and it is the sensible move when the decision is genuinely open, for instance between a 180 GSM and a 240 GSM body, or between an embroidered and a printed chest mark. Each sample is its own £150, and each credit applies against the bulk order that follows. Deciding between two fabrics in the hand takes about ten seconds; deciding from a description takes weeks and is often wrong.
Who should actually look at the sample?
Whoever will complain if it is wrong. If the shirt is uniform, give it to someone who will wear it for a full shift, because fit and comfort complaints arrive after the order does otherwise. If it is retail, put it in front of whoever sets the price, since the fabric weight in the hand is what supports the number on the tag. If a client is paying, they should hold it before approval rather than after delivery. Then have one named person sign the specification off, because a sample circulated for opinions produces revisions rather than a decision.
