Order by expected buyers or recipients, not by total headcount. For free giveaways, order close to your confirmed headcount plus a small buffer. For merch you sell, start with a modest share of attendees, keep the run to a few designs, and plan a fast reorder path for what sells out. The rest of this guide shows how to turn those rules into actual numbers for your event.
TL;DR
- Giveaways: confirmed headcount plus a 10% buffer is a sensible starting point. Treat it as our working rule, not a law.
- Merch for sale: start from a small percentage of attendees, then adjust for event type, ticket price, past sales and how visible the merch is.
- Sizes: use a size curve (S 15%, M 30%, L 30%, XL 15%, XXL 10% is a common starting point) and bend it toward your crowd.
- Fewer designs, deeper stock: one strong design in four or five sizes beats six designs in thin runs.
- Leftovers: keep a short lead time on your side, so you can reorder instead of overbuying.
Table of Contents
- Start by sorting merch into three jobs
- Quantities for items you give away
- Quantities for merch you plan to sell
- How to split quantities across sizes
- How much extra to plan, and how to avoid leftovers
- Let your budget and timeline set the final number
- Our perspective: order smaller, order twice
- Get a quantity plan for your event
- A quick checklist before you order
- FAQ
- Sources
Start by sorting merch into three jobs
Before any math, decide what each piece is for. The same shirt needs a different quantity depending on its job.
| Job | Who gets it | How to size the order |
|---|---|---|
| Staff and crew | Staff, volunteers, performers, vendors | Exact count plus a few spares for last-minute additions |
| Giveaways and sponsor gifts | VIPs, speakers, sponsors, early registrants | Confirmed list plus a 10% buffer |
| Retail | Attendees who choose to buy | Estimated sell-through, with a small first run and a reorder plan |
Mixing these in one number is the most common reason orders go wrong. A 500-person event does not need 500 shirts. It might need 40 for crew and VIPs, 150 for registered attendees if shirts are included in the ticket, or 60 to 100 for a retail table, and those are three different calculations.
Quantities for items you give away
Giveaway math is the easy one, because you control the list.
- Count confirmed recipients. Use registrations, not invitations. If registration is still open, use your last event’s final-week no-show rate as a guide.
- Add a buffer of about 10%. That covers walk-ups, sponsor requests and one-off mistakes. It is a practical rule from our production floor, so adjust it up if your registrations tend to jump in the final week.
- Split by size using the curve below, not an even split.
- Decide whether late registrants get a shirt. If not, say so on the ticket page and skip the buffer.
If the shirt is part of the ticket price, treat it as a fixed cost per attendee and order for everyone who has paid. If shirts are only for those who check in early, order for roughly the share you expect to show up in the first hours, and be honest on your registration page about how many exist.
For a run, a worked example: 300 registered attendees, 25 crew, 15 VIPs and speakers. That is 340 recipients. Adding 10% gives 374, so you would order about 375 pieces.
Quantities for merch you plan to sell
Sales merch is a forecast, not a count, and the honest answer is that attendance alone does not predict it. Four things move the number more than headcount does.
Event type and audience
A music festival, a sports tournament, a brand pop-up and a corporate conference buy merch differently. Fans of a team or artist buy to show identity. Conference attendees mostly buy only if the design is something they would wear off-site. Ask who among your crowd already wears merch from things they love.
Past sales
Your own history beats any benchmark. Festival organizers use sales from previous editions to predict and refine inventory, as Ticket Fairy’s festival merch guide describes. Record sell-through by design and by size at the end of every event. Even one event of data is worth more than a generic percentage.
Price and visibility
A table in a corner sells less than a stand people walk past. A shirt priced for impulse buying sells more units than a premium piece. If you have no history, set your first run on the conservative side and expect to reorder.
Product mix
Apparel and accessories behave differently. Shirts need a size split, so one run is spread across five or six sizes, and each size can sell out separately. Mugs, bottles and bags have no size problem, so you can order them more deeply in a single run. If you need to choose, put your quantity into non-sized items and keep the apparel run tighter.
A simple starting formula
Because the benchmarks you will find online vary widely, build your own scenario range rather than a single number:
- Take expected attendance.
- Pick a low, middle and high buyer percentage based on your event’s history or, if new, your honest guess.
- Multiply by the average pieces per buyer (usually just over one).
- Order the low-to-middle figure for the first run.
- Keep the high figure as your reorder target.
Example: 2,000 expected attendees. If you guess that 3% will buy, that is 60 buyers. At 8%, it is 160. At 12%, it is 240. You print around 100 to 150 for the first run, and hold a reorder plan for the rest. If you are wrong, you are wrong on 100 pieces instead of 400.
How to split quantities across sizes
A size curve is where order-level mistakes show up. A common starting point for a unisex T-shirt is S 15%, M 30%, L 30%, XL 15% and XXL 10%, a ratio that festival merch planners suggest tailoring to the audience: smaller for a yoga crowd, larger for a heavy metal one.
Here is how that curve looks on three order sizes:
| Size | Share | 100 pieces | 250 pieces | 500 pieces |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | 15% | 15 | 38 | 75 |
| M | 30% | 30 | 75 | 150 |
| L | 30% | 30 | 75 | 150 |
| XL | 15% | 15 | 38 | 75 |
| XXL | 10% | 10 | 25 | 50 |
Some adjustments we make in practice:
- Women’s and cropped cuts: if you include a crop tee, size it on its own curve. It will not follow the unisex split.
- Oversized fits: an oversized tee runs larger by design, so people often choose a size down. Do not simply push your whole curve up.
- Kids and families: add youth sizes only if you know children will attend, and keep that block small.
- Rounding: with small runs, round up in M and L, and round down in the extremes.
How much extra to plan, and how to avoid leftovers
Extra inventory serves two purposes: protecting against shortfalls and reducing risk. They are not the same thing.
For giveaways, the buffer is about the first one, and 10% is plenty. For retail, a large buffer is how you end up with boxes in the garage. Our approach is the opposite: run lean, and make the reorder fast.
Use a core and a drop
Pick one core design you are confident in and order it deeper. Add one or two secondary designs in smaller counts. This is often called “fewer designs, deeper stock”, and it works because every extra design splits the same demand across more size curves.
Choose a method that fits the count
The print method changes what is economical at each quantity. Screen printing generally suits larger runs of a design, since the setup is shared across many pieces. For small runs, or when you need multiple designs with no minimum, DTG and DTF are more flexible. Check the pricing pages for the current per-piece structure rather than relying on a number in a blog post. Embroidery suits hats and polos, and its costs are listed on the embroidery pricing page.
Plan the reorder before the event
The most useful question for leftover risk is: how fast can I get more? If you can restock in days, you can run a smaller first batch. If your printer takes weeks, you are forced to guess big. That is why we treat turnaround as part of the quantity decision. Our guide on ordering event merch with fast turnaround covers how to structure that.
Give leftovers a second life
Plan for the unsold pieces. Staff uniforms for next year, post-event online drops, sponsor thank-yous and community donations all take stock off your shelf. Undated designs, with no year printed on them, can be used again. Dated ones cannot.
Let your budget and timeline set the final number
Quantity is where budget meets calendar. Work backwards:
- Set the merch budget as a total, then subtract what you must spend on crew and giveaway pieces. What remains is your retail investment.
- Ask for pricing at two or three tiers, such as 50, 100 and 200 pieces. Per-piece price tends to fall as quantity rises, but a lower price per shirt is only a savings if you sell them.
- Compare the cost of the next tier up with the extra pieces it forces you to carry. If moving from 100 to 150 adds more unsold pieces than the saving, stay at 100.
- Set an artwork deadline and a decision deadline for final quantities, and share them with everyone involved.
- Leave room for a second order in your timeline, even if you do not use it.
Print placement also affects cost and speed. Settle on one front location plus perhaps a back print, and use a placement guide such as our t-shirt print placement measurements before artwork goes to production. Specific guides for left chest print size and back print size help you get artwork right the first time, which saves reprint time that you would otherwise lose.
Our perspective: order smaller, order twice
We print in Downtown Los Angeles, and the pattern we see with event organizers is consistent: the people who struggle most are the ones who had to guess once, with a single large order, because their production partner could not move quickly.
That is why we built our service around no minimums on blanks and fast turnaround, including same-day or next-day options for urgent jobs. The point is not speed for its own sake. It is that when a run can be reordered quickly, a first order can be sized for what you expect instead of what you fear. You can print the core design, watch what sells on day one, and top up the sizes that move.
It also helps that production happens under one roof. Screen printing, DTG, DTF, embroidery and labels are all methods we offer, so one event can mix them. Staff get embroidered polos, attendees get a screen-printed tee and VIPs get a custom piece, without three vendors and three deadlines. Quality matters here as well, since a shirt that looks good gets worn for years, and that is the real advertising. We wrote about that in why print quality matters for your event merch and about why custom tees work at festivals.
Our advice, in one line: choose one design you believe in, order the lean number, and keep the second order ready.
— Christian
Get a quantity plan for your event
If you have a headcount, an event date and a rough budget, we can help you turn them into a production plan: which method for which item, how to split sizes, and what a fast reorder would look like. We handle custom printing, embroidery, labels, banners and live printing at events across California, and blanks have no minimum order.
See what we offer on the Tekton LA site, or start with a two-color screen print if you already know your design and want to price a larger run.
A quick checklist before you order
- Have I separated crew, giveaway and retail quantities?
- Is my giveaway list based on confirmed registrations?
- Does my size curve match my crowd?
- Is my retail first run based on a low or middle estimate, not the highest hope?
- Do I have no more than two or three designs?
- Do I know how fast I can reorder?
- Are artwork and quantity deadlines set and shared?
- Do I have a plan for any unsold pieces?
FAQ
How many shirts should I order for an event with 500 attendees?
It depends on whether they are free or for sale. For free shirts, order for the confirmed list plus about 10%, which could be close to 500 or well under it. For shirts you sell, a first run of 50 to 150 with a reorder plan is far safer than printing one piece per attendee.
How much extra should I order as a buffer?
A 10% buffer works for giveaways and crew shirts. For retail items, a large buffer mostly creates leftovers. It is better to keep your first run lean and have a fast way to restock.
What is the best size breakdown for event T-shirts?
A common starting point for unisex tees is S 15%, M 30%, L 30%, XL 15% and XXL 10%. Adjust it to your audience, and use separate curves for women’s cuts, cropped styles and youth sizes.
Should I order more of one design or a few different designs?
Order fewer designs in more depth. Each extra design divides the same demand across another set of sizes, which makes it likelier that some pieces sit unsold. One core design plus one or two smaller options is a solid structure.
How early should I place an event merch order?
Build your timeline backwards from the event date. Include artwork approval, production, shipping and a window for a possible second order. Ask your printer for current lead times, since they change with season and workload.