Our school has been buying t-shirts online for the past few years. We discovered that you can really save a lot of money by going direct to an online wholesaler. We tried a couple of different ones at first, but hands down, our best price, ordering and customer service experience was with T-shirt.ca. These guys know their stuff. A Canadian company, they’ve been around for a while and are willing to work with you to ensure you get what you want.

Purchasing wholesale t-shirts through t-shirt.ca is simple and we’ve discovered a few more ways to save money.

1. Plan ahead and order all of your t-shirts for the year in one shipment, if possible. Go through the calendar. Look at all of the upcoming events and teams that will need shirts. Check with your school and parent councils. (Think about spirit days, tournaments, bbq’s and other events that may require unified apparel.) By combining your order into one (versus each committee or department ordering individually), your unit cost (cost for each shirt) will be lower. We typically buy anywhere from 300 to 500. That saves us more than when we bought sporadically throughout the year in smaller bunches of 50 to 75.

2. Choose a good quality t-shirt with a fit that can work on all different shapes and sizes. The Gildan 5000 is a good one. This is our go-to shirt. We order mostly in white and they print really well, but we also get grey for our sports team and school spirit apparel. Both hold up in the wash and when worn by kids and adults a like. The printers like them too. Easy to print on and they hold their shape over the long haul.

If you want a heavier cotton shirt, we have also ordered GIldan’s Ultra Cotton style 2000 in the past. Also, very nice, but with a little more heft to it.

3. Join with other schools or, when possible, have someone at the school board coordinate orders. Back to point 1: the more you order, the lower your unit cost. This year, our school trustee took on ordering for six schools in our area. We had everything shipped to the board office and then we picked up our boxes from there. With school budget cuts, everyone is trying to save wherever they can and partnering up really made sense. I highly encourage you to pursue this with your local school board for future orders. Bulk ordering seems to be the way of the future.

4. Use a local printer. We have a local printer that handles our schools’ shirts. (Make sure it’s a contract printer that is willing to use the t-shirts you provide vs. ones they have on hand. Those shirts are marked up!)

With a local printer, we are not only supporting a local business, but he’s happy to do the t-shirts for the different events as they arise. It’s a case-by-case basis. We just take over the quantity of t-shirts needed for each printing. He has all of our logos and designs already prepared and ready to go. After a couple of years, our process is pretty much seamless. Having someone local means we can often get things faster and save on shipping.

And if you are going it alone on an order, ship directly to your printer and then just pick up the excess. Again, one shipping address will save you a lot of money. And if your printer knows he has your business in a few months, he might even be willing to store some inventory for you.

I really hope that these tips will help your school or school board save money on their t-shirt orders this year!