Minimum Order for Wholesale Corporate Uniforms
By The Velocity Wear Team
The minimum for wholesale corporate uniforms is 50 pieces per design, and the sizes inside those 50 can be mixed however the team needs. What catches buyers out is the phrase per design: a second garment type is a second 50, and a second colourway needing its own screens is a second 50 as well.
What counts as one design?
One design is one garment body, one colourway and one set of artwork in one set of positions. Change any of those three and you have a second design. A medium and an extra large of the same shirt are the same design. A shirt and a polo are not, even with identical logos in identical places.
The reason is production rather than policy. Screens, stitch files and cutting are set up once per design and then run. Fifty is the point where that setup is spread thinly enough to make the unit price work. The uniforms range shows which garment types can run together as a programme.
Does a second colourway need its own 50?
If it needs its own screens, yes. This is the rule most buyers discover late, usually after promising a team a choice of two shirt colours. Two colours means two runs of fifty, not twenty-five each, and a team of forty cannot have both.
There is a way around it that costs nothing. Run one garment colour and split the team by decoration instead — a different department line stitched beneath the same logo, or a contrast position. One design, one 50, and the visual separation the manager wanted.
How do small teams reach the number?
Count the year, not the room. Multiply the headcount by the number of garments each person needs in rotation, add the people who will join before the next order, and add replacements for the pieces that get damaged. A twelve-person team on three garments each is already at 36 before a single spare.
- Multiply headcount by rotation depth, usually two or three garments per person.
- Add new starters expected before the next order goes in.
- Add replacements, weighted to the sizes that turn over fastest.
- Combine sites, franchises or partner teams onto one shared design where the branding allows.
Can you split the 50 across garment types?
No, and it is worth being clear about why, because it is the most common request. Fifty is the setup quantity for one production run. Twenty-five shirts and twenty-five aprons are two setups, each running at half the quantity that makes them viable, which is a different job entirely rather than the same job arranged differently.
What you can do is phase. Order the everyday layer at 50 now, the apron at 50 at the next budget cycle, and keep artwork on file so the second run uses the same approved setup. The cost picture for each phase is laid out in how much wholesale uniforms cost, and the size arithmetic inside a single run is covered in size splits for a bulk uniforms order. Tier pricing is on the pricing page.
It is worth asking early whether the garment choice is making the minimum harder than it needs to be. A programme built around one versatile body in one colour reaches fifty without effort. The same programme split across three bodies and two colours needs three hundred pieces before anybody is dressed. Neither approach is wrong, but the second is a budget decision as much as a design decision, and it is far better made deliberately at the specification stage than discovered when the quote lands. Ask what each extra body or colour adds to the total before anyone falls in love with the idea.
