A Practical Guide to Custom Print Size and Placement
One of the most common questions we hear at Satellite PrintLab sounds simple:
How many shirts should I order?
The answer usually isn’t “as many as possible.”
Order too few and you can run out of the sizes people actually want. Order too many and six months later you may still have boxes of XS and 3XL shirts sitting in storage.
After producing apparel for businesses, events, restaurants, organizations and brands, we’ve learned that a successful merchandise order starts before anything goes on the press.
You need the right garment, the right decoration method and, just as importantly, the right quantity and size breakdown.
Here’s how we approach it at our Austin print shop.
Start With What the Shirts Are Actually For
Before deciding on quantity, determine the purpose of the order.
There is a major difference between ordering:
- 50 employee uniforms
- 100 shirts for an event
- 250 promotional giveaways
- 500 pieces of merchandise you intend to sell
Uniform orders are relatively predictable because you can usually collect everyone’s sizes before production.
Merchandise is different.
You’re trying to predict what customers will buy, and that means your size distribution matters almost as much as your total quantity.
Event shirts create another problem: you generally don’t want to run out, but every shirt left after the event represents money sitting in a box.
There isn’t one universal quantity formula that works for every apparel order.
Don’t Order Equal Quantities of Every Size
This is probably the biggest mistake we see when someone is building their first merchandise order.
Imagine you need 100 shirts in sizes Small through 2XL.
Ordering 20 of every size sounds logical.
In practice, it often isn’t.
Most adult apparel orders tend to concentrate heavily in the middle sizes. Exactly where that concentration falls depends on your audience, garment style, fit and whether you’re ordering men’s/unisex or women’s apparel.
A hypothetical 100-piece unisex order might look more like:
Small — 10
Medium — 24
Large — 30
XL — 24
2XL — 12
That is not a universal Satellite PrintLab size formula.
It is an example of why we don’t automatically divide an order evenly across sizes.
If you already have sales history, use it.
Actual customer data is considerably more useful than a generic size chart.
Your Garment Changes the Size Mix
A Large isn’t simply a Large.
A heavyweight boxy streetwear T-shirt can fit completely differently from a lightweight fashion tee.
A women’s fitted shirt may require a very different size distribution from a unisex shirt.
Hoodies can also behave differently from tees because some customers intentionally size up for a looser fit.
This is why we recommend choosing the garment before finalizing your quantity by size.
If you’re building merchandise for a brand, restaurant or event, don’t choose a shirt based only on the blank price.
Feel the fabric.
Look at the cut.
Check the size specifications.
Consider who is actually going to wear it.
Satellite PrintLab’s apparel catalog includes a wide range of T-shirts, sweatshirts, polos, headwear and other garments because there isn’t one blank that makes sense for every project.
Selling Merchandise? Start Conservatively
If this is your first merchandise release and you have no sales history, there is nothing wrong with starting smaller.
Selling through 75 shirts and needing another production run is usually a much better problem than ordering 500 shirts and discovering that customers don’t want the garment or design.
Your first order gives you something extremely valuable:
data.
You learn which sizes disappear first.
You learn whether customers prefer black over natural.
You learn whether people buy the $22 shirt or are comfortable buying a better garment at $30.
You learn which design actually moves.
Your second order can then be based on evidence rather than guesses.
But Don’t Ignore Quantity Pricing
There is another side to ordering conservatively.
Custom apparel production has setup and production efficiencies.
Depending on the decoration method and project, producing 100 garments may reduce the effective cost per garment compared with producing 20.
That doesn’t mean you should buy inventory you don’t need just to reach a lower unit price.
Think about the total dollars at risk, not only the price printed next to each shirt.
Suppose one option costs $9 per finished shirt for 100 pieces and another costs $7.50 at 250 pieces.
The second option has a better unit cost.
But if you only sell 120 shirts, the lower unit price didn’t actually save you money.
You bought 130 pieces you didn’t need.
DTF Can Make Smaller Runs More Practical
One reason DTF has become so useful in modern apparel production is flexibility.
For many designs, DTF allows us to produce detailed, full-color graphics without some of the traditional constraints associated with other printing methods.
That can make smaller production runs and reorders much more practical.
Instead of trying to predict six months of demand in one enormous order, a business may be able to produce an initial run, watch what sells and reorder accordingly.
For a growing brand, that can be a healthier inventory strategy.
DTG Can Be Useful for Detailed Cotton Apparel
DTG is another option we consider when evaluating a project, particularly when the artwork and garment are a good match for direct-to-garment printing.
The important point is that decoration method should support the business objective.
Sometimes the right production decision is a large run.
Sometimes it is 36 pieces.
Sometimes we recommend DTF.
Sometimes DTG makes more sense.
Sometimes embroidery is the obvious answer.
A print shop shouldn’t try to force every order into the same production process.
Embroidery Orders Need Different Planning
Embroidered polos, hats and workwear often have a different purpose than printed merchandise.
For employee uniforms, we recommend collecting actual sizes whenever possible.
Don’t estimate if you don’t have to.
If you’re outfitting 25 employees, ask all 25 employees what size they wear.
For hats, sizing can be simpler if you’re using an adjustable style, but garment and cap selection still matter enormously.
Structured versus unstructured caps, crown height, fabric and closure can completely change how a finished embroidered hat feels.
If you’re ordering embroidered merchandise for resale, getting a physical sample of the cap or garment can be especially worthwhile before committing to a large quantity.
Plan for New Employees and Replacements
Uniform orders need a small buffer.
Employees change.
Shirts get stained.
Someone needs another polo.
A new employee starts Monday morning.
If your company uses a consistent uniform program, keeping a modest amount of common sizes available can save you from placing constant tiny replacement orders.
That does not mean stocking a closet with hundreds of garments.
It means thinking beyond the exact head count on the day the order is placed.
Events Require a Different Strategy
If you’re producing shirts for a festival, company event, race, fundraiser or conference, ask yourself one important question:
What happens to the shirts that are left over?
If the date is printed prominently on the shirt, leftover inventory may have very little value after the event.
That argues for tighter ordering.
If the design is evergreen and can still be sold or distributed afterward, having extra inventory carries less risk.
For giveaways, we also tend to favor the most commonly requested adult sizes rather than trying to provide every possible size in equal quantities.
Keep Records From Every Order
This may be the most valuable advice in this entire article.
After your order, record what happened.
If you ordered:
10 Small
25 Medium
30 Large
25 XL
10 2XL
and finished the event with:
7 Small
2 Medium
0 Large
1 XL
8 2XL
you just learned something extremely useful.
Next year’s order should not use the same distribution.
Businesses that consistently produce merchandise should treat apparel inventory the same way they would treat any other product inventory.
Use your own sales history.
Eventually, you stop guessing.
The Best Order Is Not Necessarily the Biggest Order
At Satellite PrintLab, our goal isn’t to convince every customer to order the largest quantity possible.
We want the order to make sense.
Sometimes that means producing 24 premium embroidered polos for a team.
Sometimes it’s 100 DTF shirts for an Austin event.
Sometimes it’s thousands of pieces for an established merchandise program.
The production method, garment, artwork, quantity and budget all have to work together.
If you’re planning a custom apparel order and aren’t sure how many pieces to produce, bring us the information you already have:
What are the shirts for?
Who will wear them?
Are they being sold or given away?
What sizes do you know?
Have you ordered before?
What happened last time?
Those answers give us a much better starting point than simply asking:
“What’s your price for 100 shirts?”
At Satellite PrintLab, we produce custom apparel here in Austin every day. We’d rather help you build an order that works than fill your storage room with shirts you never needed.