Bulk custom t-shirts: price breaks and lead times

Large orders on direct-to-garment printing behave differently from large orders on a screen press, and the differences are worth knowing before you ask three shops for a quote.

The discounts

• 20 pieces takes 10% off
• 50 pieces takes 17%
• 100 pieces takes 25%

They apply to the order rather than per design. A hundred shirts split across six departments with six different back prints is a hundred pieces and gets 25%. Mixed sizes do not affect it either.

On a Next Level 3600 that takes the printed price from $15.00 to $11.25. On a Gildan Softstyle, from $12.50 to $9.38. On the Tultex, from $8.20 to $6.15.

Where the breaks are worth chasing

The jumps are steep enough that a count sitting just underneath one is usually worth rounding up. Forty-four shirts priced at 50 costs less than forty-four priced at 44, so you receive six free shirts and pay less. That is not a trick; it is just what a 17% break does at that quantity.

Same at 18 and at 94. Check your number against the thresholds before you confirm.

Lead times at volume

Standard fulfilment is one to two business days. For a large order, tell us the date you need it by when you order.

Several hundred changes the planning. The printing itself does not slow down, because DTG prints each shirt individually, so a 400-shirt order is simply 400 print cycles and the time scales more or less linearly with the count. That predictability is useful: we can tell you accurately when it will be finished. What it is not is instant, so a 400-piece order is a few days rather than an afternoon.

Stock is the other factor. We hold the rush blanks in depth, but a large order in a specific colour of a less common garment may need the blanks brought in, which adds days at the front. Ask early and we will check stock before you commit to a date.

When to use someone else

Above roughly 150 shirts with a one or two colour design, screen printing will be cheaper per piece than we can be, and the gap widens as the number grows. At 500 shirts with a simple logo it is not close.

We will tell you this rather than quote you without mentioning it. The reason is in the method comparison: screens have high setup and very low cost per piece, so volume is what they are built for.

Two things pull the decision back our way even at volume. Complex artwork, because screen printing charges per colour and a photograph is effectively impossible — colour count does not affect our price at all. And variable printing, where every shirt differs: names, numbers, individual text. A screen shop cannot do that without a screen per shirt, and for us a hundred different names is simply a hundred different files.

What to send for a bulk quote

Quantity, the blank you want, the artwork, how many print locations, and the date you need them. That is enough for a firm number.

If you are flexible on the blank, say so — moving a 200-shirt order from Comfort Colors to Gildan Softstyle is a difference of around $900 before discount, and sometimes that matters more than the fabric does.

Prices and blanks are on the catalogue. For group orders with individual names, the team shirts article covers how to organise it.