Guide
What your merch is actually for
Most orders arrive as a garment and a logo. The question that actually settles the rest of it never gets asked: who is going to be wearing this, and why. Answer that and the blank, the count and the budget mostly decide themselves.
Four jobs, four different orders. Staff, retail, events and client gifts are not variations on one thing.
Spend where someone pays. Retail stock is the only one where the buyer is choosing to hand over money, so that is where the blank earns it.
Wrong job, wasted spend. A premium blank in a kitchen and a boxy giveaway tee on a shelf are the same mistake in opposite directions.
Staff and uniform
These get worn on shift, then washed, then worn again. Bleach, grease, heat and a wash cycle every other day. They are consumable, and pretending otherwise is how people overspend.
Buy a durable midweight, keep the print simple, and order more than you think you need so a new hire is not waiting on a run. A left chest mark is usually the whole design. Nobody needs a graphic on a shirt they wear because they work there.
The one place to spend is front of house. Those get seen by every customer for a whole shift, and a shirt that fits properly reads differently across a counter than one that does not.
Retail stock
This is the only one on the list where someone is choosing to pay for it, and that changes everything.
Your shirt is not competing with other merch. It is competing with what is already in their closet. If it is boxier, scratchier or duller than what they own, it stays on the shelf no matter how good the design is.
So this is where the money goes. Softer blank, retail fit, a color worth wearing. The design also has to stand on its own, because a customer is not wearing your logo out of loyalty, they are wearing it because they like the shirt.
The test worth applying. Would you wear it if you had no connection to the business? If the honest answer is no, it is a staff shirt with a price tag on it, and it will sit.
Events
Volume and timing matter more than feel. The shirt exists for a day, gets handed out or sold at a table, and its job is to leave with someone.
Simple print, budget blank, and get the count right. Sizes are where event orders actually go wrong. Mediums and larges empty first at almost every event while boxes of small and 2XL go home with you. Skew the run toward the middle rather than ordering an even spread.
Timing is the other half. Work backwards from the date, not forwards from today, and leave room for a proof round. An event shirt that arrives the following week is a total loss in a way a staff shirt never is.
Client gifts and brand pieces
Low quantity, high visibility, and the recipient did not ask for it. That last part is what makes this the hardest of the four.
An unwanted shirt gets thrown out and takes a bit of goodwill with it. So the blank has to be good enough that keeping it is the easy choice, and the branding usually has to be quieter than you would like. A small mark on a genuinely nice shirt gets worn. A large logo on a cheap one goes in a drawer.
Treat these closer to retail than to staff, even though nobody is paying for them.
Side by side
| Job | Blank | Where the risk is | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Staff | Durable midweight | Small, usually left chest | Overspending on something consumable |
| Retail | Soft, retail fit | A design worth wearing | A blank nobody would buy on its own |
| Events | Budget, simple | One color, fast | Wrong size split, or missing the date |
| Gifts | Good, quiet branding | Small and restrained | Too much logo on too cheap a shirt |
If this is your first order
You do not have to pick perfectly. You have to pick once and then find out.
Start with the job you are most sure about, usually staff, because you already know how many people you have and what they will do to a shirt. Get that run in hand, see how it wears and how people react, and use what you learn on the next one.
The mistake worth avoiding is trying to make one order serve all four jobs. A shirt built to survive a kitchen and to sell at a counter and to hand out at a festival ends up doing none of them well.
If you do want one run to cover two jobs, which is often the cheapest way in, decide the blank on the retail standard. The shirt someone pays for sets the bar, and staff will not complain about getting the nicer one.
Common questions
What is the difference between staff shirts and retail merch?
Staff shirts are worn hard and washed constantly, so durability beats feel and there is no reason to overspend. Retail stock is something a customer chooses to pay for, so it competes with their own closet and the blank and fit are where the money should go.
How many shirts should I order for an event?
Count the people you expect and skew sizes toward the middle. Mediums and larges move first almost everywhere. Running out of the middle while boxes of small and 2XL come home is the usual failure.
Do I need a different design for staff and retail?
Usually. Staff wear the shirt because they work there, so a left chest mark is enough. A customer wears it because they want to, so the design has to be worth wearing on its own.
Can one order cover more than one purpose?
It can, and it is often the cheapest way in. Just decide the blank on the retail standard rather than the staff one.
Not sure which one you are placing?
Tell us who is going to wear it and why. That is usually enough for us to tell you what the run should look like.
Start an order →