Custom merch is one of the highest-leverage things a festival or event can do — it pays for itself when it works, and quietly bleeds money when it doesn't. After a few cycles of running wholesale orders for festivals out of Townsville, here's what we'd tell anyone setting it up for the first time.
Start with the why
Before you pick fabrics or print runs, decide what the apparel is actually for. The answer changes every other decision:
- Stage staff and crew — needs durability, easy laundering, high-visibility colour. Quality matters more than design.
- Volunteers — needs to identify them on sight; design matters; comfort matters because they'll be in them 12+ hours.
- Attendee merch (for sale) — design is everything; this is what people pay for and Instagram. Quality has to match the price tag.
- Sponsor or vendor uniforms — brand visibility, often with logos provided.
It's normal to need all four. Each gets its own line item in the order.
Plan backwards from the event date
The single biggest cause of wholesale apparel disasters is timeline. A safe backwards plan:
- 12 weeks out — design approved, colours and styles locked.
- 10 weeks out — sizing survey sent to staff/volunteers. Lock the size breakdown.
- 8 weeks out — wholesale order placed. Production starts.
- 3 weeks out — stock arrives, get it sorted into bundles by team/role.
- Event day — enough left over for last-minute volunteers and replacements.
The 8-weeks-out rule is generous on purpose. Print on demand is faster but doesn't get you volume pricing. Bulk wholesale needs the headroom — especially for screen printing, which has its own setup time per design.
The sizing breakdown that actually works
One of the most expensive mistakes you can make is over-ordering small sizes and under-ordering large. For an Australian adult crew, the rough breakdown that works for most events:
- S — 10%
- M — 25%
- L — 30%
- XL — 20%
- 2XL — 10%
- 3XL — 5%
Adjust upward for events with a heavily female demographic (skew smaller) or industrial trades (skew larger). When in doubt, lean larger — oversized fits well for layers and souvenirs; undersized goes straight in the bin.
Mix-and-match volume pricing
Most wholesale tee programs (ours included) let you mix colours, sizes and even designs across a single order to hit volume tiers. So if your event has three different staff polos plus a volunteer tee, you don't need 25 of each design — you need 25 units across the whole order to unlock the bulk price.
This matters because it lets you keep more designs in the mix without over-ordering any one of them.
Artwork: what to send the printer
Five things to have ready before you place the order:
- Vector artwork (SVG, AI, or high-resolution PDF). Avoid JPGs and screenshots.
- The exact Pantone or hex colours you want printed. "Red" is not a colour spec.
- Print position and size. Centre-front 30cm wide is the default. Different placement changes the price.
- Front-only or front-and-back. Double-sided prints add cost per unit — know this going in.
- The base garment colour. White, black, navy and grey are standard; everything else is special order.
If you don't have vector artwork yet, your designer can usually produce it from a logo sketch in 1–2 hours. Don't try to make a low-res JPG work — it won't.
Shipping logistics for events
Order delivery to the venue if you can, but only if there's a reliable receiving person on-site. Otherwise:
- Deliver to the event organiser's office or warehouse 1–2 weeks before.
- Open and count everything within 48 hours of arrival — short-shipments and printing errors get fixed faster the earlier you flag them.
- Sort into per-role bundles immediately. Don't leave it for event week.
The questions worth asking your wholesaler before you order
- What's your real lead time from approved artwork to delivery?
- What happens if a unit arrives faulty — do you replace, refund, or credit?
- Is shipping included in the per-unit price, or quoted separately?
- What's your minimum reorder quantity if we underestimate?
- Do you hold the artwork on file for future runs?
You want those answers in writing before any money changes hands.
Plan for the unplanned
Three things will happen on event day:
- You'll have last-minute volunteers without shirts.
- Someone will spill coffee on a clean shirt during set-up.
- A VIP guest you forgot about will need a shirt.
Order 10% over your headcount. The cost of extras is always cheaper than the chaos of being short.
Ready to plan your event apparel?
If you're running a festival, club, or business event and want a quote on wholesale custom apparel, fill in our wholesale application form. We'll review your details and come back to you within 1 business day with pricing and timelines.