Every summer, we see the same thing happen.
Someone orders 100 custom t shirts for their company outing. They pick whatever’s cheapest, slap a logo on it, and hand them out at the event. Two weeks later, half those shirts are in a donation bag and the other half are being used to wash cars.
And then the same person comes back the following year and wonders why nobody remembered the event.
The thing is, decoration custom apparel can do real work for your brand — if you give it a fighting chance. A shirt that fits well, feels good in July heat, and looks clean with a logo? People wear that to the grocery store, to the gym, to their kid’s soccer game. Your brand travels with them. That’s the whole point.
This guide is about getting there. Not just picking a shirt — picking the right shirt for what you’re actually doing, who you’re dressing, and what conditions they’ll be in.
We’ve handled orders from 12 pieces to 12,000. What follows is what we’ve genuinely learned along the way.
The Summer Apparel Problem Nobody Talks About
Here’s something the product pages won’t tell you: most custom apparel fails before it even gets decorated.
The wrong fabric for a hot outdoor event means your staff looks wilted by noon. The wrong fit for your audience means shirts go unworn. The wrong brand for your decoration method means a logo that cracks after three washes.
None of that is about spending more money. It’s about making the right call for your specific situation — and that starts with understanding what you’re actually ordering and why.
So before we get into brands and fabrics, ask yourself three things:
Where is this apparel being worn — indoors, outdoors, or both? Who’s wearing it — athletic people, corporate staff, volunteers, kids? And what do you want them to do with it after the event — keep it, return it, or does it not matter?
Your answers will shape everything that follows.
T-Shirts: The Backbone of Summer Apparel
Custom T-shirts are where most summer orders start, and for good reason. They’re the most versatile, the most cost-effective at scale, and when you choose right, they’re the item people genuinely hold onto.
The mistake most people make is treating all wholesale t-shirts as basically the same product with different price tags. They’re not. The gap between a $4 blank and an $8 blank is not just two dollars — it’s the difference between a shirt someone tosses and a shirt someone keeps.
For casual events — company picnics, charity walks, community festivals — Bella + Canvas is the one we recommend most often. Their 3001 is a lightweight ringspun cotton tee with a retail fit that genuinely doesn’t feel like a freebie. It drapes well, it prints beautifully, and it’s soft enough that people reach for it on weekends. If your brand is showing up on a shirt, this is the one that reflects well on you.
If you’re ordering in serious volume — 200 pieces and up — Gildan’s Softstyle line is where budget meets reliability. It’s not as soft as Bella + Canvas, but it’s consistent, it holds color well, and it won’t fall apart after a few washes. For charity runs, school events, and large team distributions where cost per unit matters, Gildan does the job without embarrassing you.
For anything involving real physical activity — camps, outdoor staff, athletic programs — switch to Sport-Tek. Moisture-wicking isn’t a marketing term here, it’s a practical necessity. A cotton shirt on an outdoor camp counselor in August is a bad experience for everyone. Sport-Tek’s performance fabric handles sweat, moves well, and still looks clean enough to wear in a professional outdoor setting.
Next Level Apparel is worth mentioning if you want something slightly more elevated without jumping to a premium price point. Softer than Gildan, more fashion-conscious cut, and particularly good in the women’s styles — which many brands overlook and then wonder why female team members never wear their shirts.
One honest note: don’t let your printer or supplier talk you into a specific shirt purely based on their margin. If something feels off about the recommendation, ask to see a sample blank before you commit. Any reputable supplier will do that.
Custom Polos: When the Setting Requires Something Sharper
Not every summer event is a picnic. Trade shows, hospitality roles, golf tournaments, outdoor retail staff — these settings need something that reads as professional without cooking the person wearing it.
The modern performance polo has quietly become one of the best garments in the corporate apparel space. Moisture-managed, embroidery-friendly, and structured enough to look intentional — it threads the needle between formal and functional.
Port Authority is the most consistent performer for corporate and hospitality settings. Their moisture-management polos hold structure through a full shift, take embroidery cleanly, and come in a size range that actually accommodates a real mixed workforce. If you’re dressing a trade show team or outdoor event staff, this is a safe, solid choice.
For anything more athletic — coaching staff, sports administrators, camp leadership — Sport-Tek performance polo is built differently. It’s designed for people who are moving, not just standing at a booth. More stretch, more airflow, same professional appearance.
And then there’s the category where the brand name on the tag genuinely matters. If you’re running a premium event, a VIP hospitality experience, or an executive off-site, Nike Dri-FIT and Custom Adidas Apparel carry a different weight. People notice the swoosh. It signals that you invested in them, not just in the event. The per-piece cost is higher — but so is how long those shirts stay in rotation.
One thing worth doing before any large polo order: request samples in your most common sizes from the actual brand you’re ordering. Polo sizing varies more than t-shirt sizing across manufacturers, and discovering that on delivery day is a bad surprise.
Lightweight Outerwear: The Piece Most People Forget
Summer isn’t always hot. Early morning 5Ks, evening corporate events on a rooftop, outdoor camps that run into September — temperature swings are real, and a team without a layer looks unprepared when it cools down.
The right summer outer layer is packable, breathable, and light enough that nobody resents carrying it. It’s not a fleece. It’s not a rain jacket. It’s something that blocks wind, adds a polished team look, and folds into a bag pocket when the sun comes back out.
Holloway has built a genuine reputation in this specific space, particularly with leagues and school athletic programs. Their outerwear is engineered for mobility — vented, lightweight, and cut for movement. If your team is active, this is the brand that shows up.
For a more corporate setting, Port Authority lightweight jackets give you a cleaner, less athletic look that works just as well at a company outing as it does for a branded onboarding package. Consistent embroidery surface, solid color range, professional without being stiff.
If outerwear is part of your order, make sure the color matches your shirts across the full size run. Color consistency across sizes sounds basic, but it’s one of the more common complaints in bulk team apparel — and it’s worth confirming with your supplier before production.
Headwear: The Highest-Retention Item You’re Probably Underordering
Here’s a stat worth knowing: branded caps have an average retention rate of 14+ months. That’s longer than almost any other promotional item. The reason is simple — a cap that fits and looks good becomes part of someone’s daily rotation in a way that a shirt or a tote bag rarely does.
For summer events especially, headwear solves an actual problem (sun) while keeping your brand visible well past the event itself. It’s consistently one of the highest-ROI items per dollar spent in promotional apparel.
Richardson is the brand serious custom headwear buyers tend to land on. Their structured caps hold their shape, offer an excellent embroidery surface, and come in enough colorways to match almost any brand palette. These are the caps that still look sharp a year later.
Yupoong is behind more cap silhouettes than most people realize — including a lot of the classic adjustable styles that feel familiar and comfortable immediately. Great for casual events and promotions where approachability matters more than structured fit.
Port & Company is the practical volume choice. When you need 400 caps for a charity walkathon and the per-unit cost is a genuine constraint, Port & Company delivers without embarrassing the brand on the brim.
If headwear isn’t currently part of your summer orders, it’s worth reconsidering. It’s the item that keeps working for you long after everything else has been forgotten.
Fabric: The Decision That Determines Everything Else
You can get the brand right and still get the fabric wrong. And fabric wrong in summer heat is a problem that no amount of good design will fix.
The honest fabric breakdown for summer:
Ringspun cotton is the most comfortable fabric for moderate heat and social settings. It feels good, it prints beautifully, and it’s what people mean when they say a shirt feels like a “real shirt.” The limitation is that it absorbs sweat rather than managing it — fine for a company picnic, not ideal for a six-hour outdoor event.
Polyester performance fabric is purpose-built for heat and movement. It wicks moisture away from the skin, dries fast, and doesn’t cling. The tradeoff is that it can feel less premium in social settings, and it requires specific decoration methods — screen printing with standard inks can crack on performance fabric, so sublimation or heat transfer is usually the right call.
Cotton-poly blends split the difference. You get most of the comfort of cotton with some of the performance benefits of polyester. For events where people might be moving some of the time but not all of the time — think a company sports day or an outdoor expo — blends are a smart, versatile choice.
Tri-blends (cotton, polyester, rayon) are the fabric choice for premium merch. They’re softer than anything else on this list, they drape beautifully, and they get better with every wash. If you’re making apparel that’s meant to be kept and loved rather than just worn at an event, tri-blends are worth the slightly higher cost.
The short version: if people are sweating, go performance. If people are socializing, go cotton or tri-blend. If you’re not sure, a blend covers most situations respectably.
Screen Print or Embroidery: A Practical Answer
This comes up in almost every order conversation, and the honest answer is simpler than most people expect.
Screen printing is for large graphics on flat fabric — primarily t-shirts and lightweight jackets. It handles color and detail well at scale, it’s the most cost-effective decoration method for runs of 24 pieces and up, and it’s the right choice when your design is bold and graphic-forward.
It’s the wrong choice for moisture-wicking polyester (ink adheres poorly), for very small or highly detailed logos (screen printing loses fine lines at small sizes), and for headwear (which isn’t flat).
Embroidery is for structured surfaces — polos, hats, jackets, bags. It has a permanence and a texture that print can’t replicate, and it reads as more professional in corporate and hospitality settings. It’s priced by stitch count rather than color, which means simple text-based logos are often more economical than complex multicolor graphics.
The practical guide: if it’s a t-shirt with a bold logo or graphic, screen print. If it’s a polo, cap, or jacket with a clean brand mark, embroider it. When the two options feel genuinely close, ask your decorator which will make your specific design look better on your specific garment. That’s the real question.
Ordering: The Practical Stuff That Saves You From Stress
A few things that come up constantly and are worth knowing before you start.
Build your timeline backwards. Standard production is 7–10 business days from proof approval. That’s not from when you submit your order — it’s from when you sign off on the digital proof. Add shipping time on top of that. If your event is July 15th, you want proof approval done by late June at the latest. Most summer ordering headaches are just timeline headaches that could have been avoided by starting earlier.
On quantities: screen printing typically requires a minimum of 24 pieces per design. Embroidery usually starts at 12. DTG (direct-to-garment) printing can handle smaller runs with no real minimum, which makes it the right answer for smaller teams or test runs before a larger order.
On sizing: if you’re ordering for a group without individual size data, a reasonable adult distribution is roughly 5% Small, 25% Medium, 35% Large, 25% XL, 10% 2XL. Over-order by about 10% on your most common sizes. Extras are cheap. Reorders are not.
On art files: vector files (AI, EPS, PDF) are ideal. High-resolution PNG at 300 DPI works. A logo pulled from your website almost certainly won’t. This is the thing that delays more orders than anything else — flag your file situation early so there’s time to work with it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the best custom t-shirt to order for a summer event?
It depends on what’s happening at the event. For casual and social settings — picnics, fundraisers, festivals — Bella+Canvas lightweight ringspun cotton is our most-recommended option. It’s comfortable, prints beautifully, and has a fit people actually want to wear again. For events with real physical activity or sustained heat, Sport-Tek performance tees are the more honest recommendation. Don’t let a one-size-fits-all answer talk you into the wrong shirt for your specific situation.
How early do I need to place my order?
For a standard order, 3–4 weeks before your event gives you comfortable breathing room. For orders over 300 pieces, or anything involving sublimation or special fabrics, build in 5–6 weeks. Rush production exists, but it limits your options and adds cost — it’s always the more stressful path.
What’s the minimum order quantity?
Screen printing: 24 pieces per design is the standard minimum. Embroidery: typically 6 pieces. DTG: can start at 6 pieces, which makes it useful for small teams or sample runs. If your quantity is under 24, DTG is usually the most practical option.
Will I see a proof before production starts?
Yes, always — at least at GotApparel. A digital proof goes out before production begins, and nothing moves forward without your approval. Use that proof review carefully: check placement, sizing, spelling, and colors. Changes after production starts cost money and time.
Does price per piece drop with larger orders?
Yes, and meaningfully so. Custom apparel pricing is tiered, and the per-piece cost decreases as quantity increases. At 100+ pieces, you’re often looking at 30–40% lower per-unit cost compared to minimum quantity pricing. If you’re close to a quantity tier, it’s often worth bumping up slightly to hit the better rate.
Screen print or embroidery for my logo on a polo?
Embroidery, almost always. Polos have a textured surface that doesn’t take screen print ink the same way a flat t-shirt does, and embroidery just looks more intentional and professional on a structured garment. The only exception is if your logo is extremely large or has very fine gradient detail — in that case, talk to your decorator about the best option for your specific design.
One Last Thing
Good summer apparel isn’t about spending the most money. It’s about making the right decision for your event, your audience, and the conditions they’ll be in.
The orders that work — where people wear the shirts, comment on them, keep them — aren’t always the most expensive ones. They’re the ones where someone thought it through before clicking order.
If you’re not sure what’s right for your situation, that’s exactly what we’re here for. Tell us your event date, your rough quantity, and what you’re going for. We’ll give you a straight answer and a quote, no pressure attached.
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