Your first 100 pieces

Why 100 is the right number

Below 100 you cannot get a meaningful print price and a stock blank is not economic. Above 100 you are tying up cash in sizes you have not proved yet. One hundred is the smallest number that gets you a real per-piece price on the blank, a real price on the print, and enough shirts to learn which size your audience actually buys.

At 100 pieces a 230gsm heavyweight crew from US stock is $3.90 a piece. At 600 it is $3.55. That is the honest shape of the discount ladder: the first 500 pieces of volume save you $0.35 a shirt, and you have to earn the right to buy them by selling the first 100.

The size curve

The internet's default advice is "buy equal numbers of each size". That advice is wrong, and it is the single most expensive mistake in a first order. Adult unisex t-shirts do not sell evenly — they cluster at M and L, with a long tail at 2XL.

For a first order of 100 unisex adult shirts, a defensible starting curve is:

Two adjustments matter more than the exact percentages:

• Streetwear / oversized cuts shift up. A boxy or drop-shoulder shirt in a streetwear context sells more L, XL and 2XL, because the fit is meant to be loose and buyers size up deliberately.
• Women's cut runs smaller. If you are buying a women's fit, the peak moves to S/M and XL is a smaller share.

Rule of thumb for the first order: never allocate more than 30% to any single size, and never fewer than 8 pieces to any size you list. A size that sells out on day three teaches you nothing and loses you the sale.

How many colours

One. For the first order, one colour, or at most two with an 80/20 split. Every additional colour multiplies the number of size curves you must sell through, and it doubles the chance that one colourway ends up as dead stock.

The exception is a specific use case — a team or event that needs two colourways for two groups. In that case buy two colours but treat them as two separate curves of 50, and expect to pay the 100-piece price on each rather than the 200-piece price.

White and black are the correct first colours because they are the easiest to photograph, the easiest to print on, and the least likely to look wrong on a phone screen. A mid-grey is the third.

Which weight

For a first order the honest recommendation is 200–230gsm. It is heavy enough not to feel cheap in the hand, light enough to print easily, and it is what most of your customers already own.

The real cost of the first order

One hundred 230gsm blanks, one colour, one-colour front print, shipped to you:

At a $28 retail price and 100 shirts sold, revenue is $2,800 and the goods cost roughly $607 — before platform fees and shipping to customers. The number that kills people is not the cost, it is thetime to sell 100 shirts. Budget 90 days and do not spend the revenue in advance.

Six mistakes that kill order two

1. Buying equal sizes. Already covered, still the most common. Ten of each is not a curve, it is a guess.
2. Buying one colour in five sizes and calling it a range. Depth in one colour beats width across five.
3. Ordering the print before the blanks arrive. The printer needs the blanks in hand for a screen print; sequencing it the other way round costs a week.
4. Skipping the sample. Print one shirt, wear it, wash it. A print that cracks after one wash is a refund you will pay 100 times.
5. Forgetting the 2XL surcharge in the price. Extended sizes cost more per piece. If you price all sizes the same, every 2XL you sell loses money.
6. Spending the first revenue on the second order before the first has sold. Order two should be funded by order one's sales, not by savings.

Order checklist

If all six are true, you are ready. If any one is missing, the order is not ready and no supplier can fix that for you — step 4 covers the pricing one, which is the one people skip.