Why You Should Always Order a Few Extra Shirts

One shirt is not a small order

When you come back for a single replacement, we can't just print one. Every reorder is a fresh setup. The screens come back out or get reburned, the ink gets mixed again, the press gets lined up and registered again, and a test print gets pulled to confirm it matches the first run. That work costs the same whether we're printing one shirt or two hundred.

So our minimum is 12 pieces per design, and it applies to a reorder exactly the way it applied to the first order. A reorder of 12 also prices at the 12-piece rate, which is the highest rate on the sheet. If your design has multiple colors, or it's printing on the front and the back, that gap gets wide in a hurry.

What being one short actually costs

Say you ordered 50 Comfort Colors 1717 tees with a 1-color front print. At the 50 to 99 tier, the print is $5.25 per piece and the blank is $5.33, so you're at $10.58 a shirt and $529.00 for the order.

Now you're one short. The smallest reorder we can run is 12 pieces, and 12 pieces prices at the 12 to 23 tier, where that same 1-color front print is $12.00 per piece instead of $5.25. Twelve shirts comes to $207.96. You needed one shirt and you spent more than a third of your original order to get it, and you're sitting on 11 spares you didn't plan for.

Add a second color or a back print and the math gets worse, because the low-tier print rates climb faster than the high-tier ones. The same 11 spares ordered up front with the original 50 would have cost you around $116, and they would have shipped in the same box.

Sizes never land where people think they will

Ask ten people their shirt size and a few of them will be wrong, and a couple of them have been wrong since 2019. That's not a knock on anybody. Sizing drifts, people's bodies change, and most of us are answering from memory.

Cuts differ between brands, too, and it's a bigger difference than the size letter suggests. A Comfort Colors 1717 is a boxy, heavier garment that runs relaxed. A Next Level 6210 is a fitted CVC tee. A large in one is not a large in the other, and someone who ordered based on the last shirt they got from a different printer is going to be surprised. If you're switching styles from a previous order, that's worth saying out loud to your group before you take the count.

The fix is cheap. Order a few extra in the sizes people actually reach for, which for most groups is large and extra large, and keep them on hand.

If these are staff shirts, order for the people you haven't hired yet

Uniform orders are where this hurts most, because turnover is a certainty and shirts are part of onboarding. A few spares on the shelf means the new person has a shirt on their first day instead of waiting two or three weeks on a reorder that costs you top-tier pricing for the privilege.

The same goes for anything you hand out at a counter or a front desk. If the shirt is part of how the business looks, the shirt has to be in stock, and a stack in a closet is the cheapest way to make that true.

Take the size count properly

Don't have one person guess for everybody. Send a form or a shared spreadsheet and have people pick their own size and put their own name next to it. Give a hard deadline, because there's always someone who answers the day after the order goes in.

Then add your spares on top of whatever comes back. Not instead of the count, on top of it. A common approach for a group order is the exact count plus a handful in the middle sizes, and for a staff order, the exact count plus enough to cover a few months of hiring.

One more thing worth knowing while you're counting: quantity tiers are based on the total pieces in the order, so the spares you add can push you into a better price break for the whole run. Going from 45 pieces to 50 drops the per-piece print cost on all 50. Sometimes the extras nearly pay for themselves.

Store them so they're still good later

Keep spares folded, out of direct sunlight, somewhere dry. A white shirt left in a window will yellow, and a printed shirt sitting under something heavy for a year can pick up creasing you'll see when it finally gets worn. A closet shelf or a bin is fine. The trunk of a car is not.

Label the bin with the sizes and the design so the person who needs one in eight months can find it without opening everything.

When a second run does make sense

None of this means a reorder is a mistake. If you're growing, or you're reselling and the first run sold out, a second run at a real quantity is exactly the right call, and we'd rather print that than have you sit on inventory you didn't need. Running 50 now and 50 in the spring is a reasonable way to manage cash.

That's a different situation from being three shirts short on an order that's already done. The first is planning. The second is a $208 fix for a $30 problem.

The short version

Take the count from the people wearing the shirts, add a few in the sizes that go first, and know that the extras get priced at whatever tier your order lands in. The cheapest shirt in your order is the one you added at the start.

If you're not sure how many spares makes sense for your group, tell us the headcount and what the shirts are for and we'll tell you what we'd add. Call or text (804) 373-2590, or email orders@rvathreads.com.