"We started half-worried, half-hopeful": ordering 180 short-sleeve tees for a summer workshop

We made 180 of them as summer in-house workshop merch. Honestly, right up until I hit order I was nervous. Would the print come out right, what if the sizing was off, what if the fabric had that typical group-tee feel… get a bulk order wrong once and all 180 are a wash.

But once they arrived, the team's reaction was the fastest part. Someone said "this feels like a tee you'd just buy." The group photo on workshop day came out great too. The lead time was 8 business days, so we ran it comfortably within schedule.

This was the part I cared about most. If it's thick, no one wears it in summer. The worst is making merch that just sits in the closet.

So I went for something not too thick and on the cool side. When it arrived it was exactly the weight I intended, so I was satisfied. I liked being able to choose the fit and the material brand. Instead of lumping everything under one "group-tee fabric," you can pick to suit the use (workshop, summer, all-day wear), so the result comes out as intended.

We mocked up the logo and workshop slogan on our side and sent it over. The print quality honestly exceeded expectations. The colors I saw on screen came out almost exactly, crisp and sharp.

One thing I do want to flag: at first we were going to use a neon-family color. But O-SEAN told us up front and honestly that "on this fabric, that color won't come out as vivid as it looks on screen." They could've just printed it as told, but they proposed adjusting the tone first, and it came out better as a result. If anything, that honesty made me want to trust them with it again next time.

Right, sizing is the scariest part of a bulk order. We took specs per person from XS to 3XL and allocated, and the fit itself fit well without trouble. Picking based on your usual size didn't go far off.

If I had to name a downside, it's that one or two people felt it slightly roomier than usual. Here's my tip: for a bulk order, get one sample first before the main run and check the actual fit. Then size allocation gets much more accurate. I'll do that on my next order too.

For this job it was in the low ₩10,000s per tee. That includes the printing. It depends on quantity, fabric, and print method so it's hard to read as an absolute figure, but for this quality at this price, I found it plenty reasonable.

I'm definitely up for reordering. After the workshop went well, the talk of "let's do the next event's merch here too" came up internally on its own. We started half-worried, half-hopeful, and now the most comfortable part is never having to hunt for a new merch vendor each time.