Small volumes
Fifty units is the least comfortable number in branded merchandise. It is small enough that the setup fee dominates and large enough that you cannot just run a digital print. Almost every budget decision on a fifty-person order comes down to one question: how many times are you paying to set the artwork up?
Take a standard cotton polo, one colour, one logo, screen printed. The setup for that colour runs 12,000 to 18,000 AMD depending on the shop and how many screens the run needs. Spread across fifty garments that is 240 to 360 AMD per unit before a single shirt has been printed, on top of the garment itself, the printing labour and the 20% VAT. On a mid-priced polo the setup can be a fifth of your landed unit cost.
Now add a second colour. Another screen, another setup, another 12,000 to 18,000 AMD, which is another 240 to 360 per unit at fifty. Three colours pushes the setup alone past 40,000 AMD, which is more per head than the difference between a good and a basic polo. At five hundred units that second colour costs you 30 or 40 AMD a head and the argument disappears, so this is exactly the kind of decision that must be made differently depending on the run.
The same arithmetic applies to products. An embroidered cap carries a setup or digitising charge on top of the embroidery rate, and at fifty units that fixed element is a large share of the price. Drinkware with a laser or pad print has no screen cost but pays a per-piece rate that is far higher on small runs, because the machine time is set up for the run rather than the piece.
The honest summary: at fifty units you should expect a unit price roughly two to three times the unit price of the same item at five hundred. That is not a supplier margin problem, it is arithmetic. Anyone quoting the five hundred unit price to a fifty unit order is either wrong or planning to drop your order when it lands on the floor of the shop.
Screen printing, DTF transfer and embroidery all sit at a minimum of 50 to 100 pieces in this market. Fifty units is therefore either exactly at the floor or just below it, and just below is worse, because you get rounded up and pay for the rounding. If a supplier quotes you fifty pieces screen printed and the shop's minimum is 100, you are paying a setup on one colour for a run of fifty, which is the single most expensive way to buy screen printing.
There are two honest escapes. The first is DTG, which runs from one piece and costs a few thousand AMD per unit at low volumes with no setup at all. Fifty DTG polos will cost more per unit than fifty screen-printed polos and they will be in your hands in a week instead of a month. For a fifty-person pilot that is usually the correct trade. The second is sublimation, which has a floor around 25 to 50 and is only available on polyester, so it suits a team uniform rather than a customer gift.
The mistake to avoid is splitting fifty units across two or three decoration methods to work around minimums. You end up paying two setups, two proofs, two delivery windows and two sets of colour matching, for fifty garments. The setup cost is a fixed cost and fixed costs punish splitting at exactly the volumes where you cannot afford them.
Eight products for fifty people means eight setups, eight proofs and eight chances for the brand to look inconsistent. A polo for the visible half, a cap or tee for the rest, and a single giveaway item if the brief allows. Splitting fifty across eight items gives you roughly six pieces per item, which is below every minimum in the market.
At fifty the colour argument is settled by arithmetic. Spend the difference on fabric weight and fit instead, because a well-cut 220 gsm polo that survives a year of washing says more about the company than a two-colour print on a thin one. Colour lives in the logo, not the garment.
Fifty people means you can ask everyone directly, so ask. Send a four-option form rather than a free-text field, because free text produces forty different spellings of M. Five wrong sizes on a fifty-unit order is ten percent of the budget gone, and swaps at fifty units usually mean paying the setup a second time.
If the fifty is a pilot for a larger rollout in eighteen months, the goal is a fit, a colour and a supplier you can reuse, not the cheapest possible shirt. Book two extra weeks for the second run and keep the same artwork file, because re-setting the same design later is what turns a pilot into a discount.
A fifty-person order usually arrives with a number attached and no flexibility above it. The pressure lands on the wrong thing, because the instinct is to keep the design and cheapen the product. In our experience that is backwards. Cheapening the garment is visible to everyone wearing it, and cheapening the decoration is visible only to someone comparing suppliers.
So give up in this order. First the second colour, because it is the largest saving for the smallest visual cost. Then embroidery or a specialised technique, moving to screen printing where the volume is at the floor anyway. Then the giveaway item, which is optional and rarely worn. Then the premium fabric, and only as a last step, and never below a weight where the garment goes transparent after a season.
Do not give up the artwork quality. A fifty-unit run where the logo has been simplified to fit a cheaper screen will be visible to everyone who knows the logo. Ask the printer what the artwork needs to survive the process, and accept their answer on stitch counts, minimum line weights and clear space. They are not trying to upsell you; they are telling you where the print will fail.
Also give up the idea of a perfect fit for everyone. A fifty-unit order that goes to a mixed team can include a handful of larger sizes and a unisex cut rather than a tailored one, and nobody will notice. What people notice is that five colleagues were visibly overlooked.
Fifty shirts fit in two cartons and come to your door in a van. You do not need a freight booking, a pallet or a customs agent, and you do not need to think about ISPM-15 or container loading. Ask for delivery to the office rather than to a home address, and hold the cartons until you have checked the count against the size run.
Where the logistics get complicated is returns. If five people cannot attend and you have five spare units, you can reissue them within the same programme at no cost if the supplier kept the artwork. If you closed the order, you will pay a full setup again, and that is the argument for ordering a handful of extra units on small runs. At fifty, adding three spare pieces costs a small fraction of a second setup and buys most of the insurance you need.
Confirm the lead time in writing before you announce anything internally. Screen printing at fifty runs seven to fifteen working days depending on the shop's queue, DTG can be faster, and embroidery sits at the longer end because the digitising step comes first. Internal announcements that promise a date nobody confirmed are the reason fifty-person programmes lose goodwill with the team they were meant to reward.
At fifty units you will usually get two quotes that differ by fifteen or twenty percent, and the temptation is to take the cheaper one. Look at what differs instead. If one quote includes a second colour and the other quotes one colour at a lower unit price, the totals are not comparable. Ask both suppliers to quote the same specification in writing, including garment weight, decoration method, colour count, quantity, delivery date and whether VAT is included.
Ask where the garment is made. A mid-range polo at fifty units can come from a Turkish or regional mill or from a cheaper source with a shorter life. The difference shows up in collar structure and stitching after the twentieth wash, and by then nobody remembers which quote was cheaper. If a supplier will not name the mill, that is information too.
Ask what happens if four pieces arrive defective. At fifty units a reprint of four pieces costs another full setup, so the answer matters more than it would at five hundred. A supplier confident in their own work will either reprint the batch or credit the affected units against the next run, and the answer tells you more about the relationship than the price did.
Finally, ask whether the price includes delivery inside Yerevan and what the marginal cost of delivery to Vanadzor is. Small runs lose a surprising amount of margin to individual hand-deliveries, and a supplier who will not quote regional delivery separately is probably absorbing it somewhere you will not enjoy.
Every quote you receive will be clearer if you ask for the VAT treatment in writing. Whether 20% is included in the stated unit price or added on top changes what a fifty-unit order actually costs by around a fifth, and it is the single most common reason two apparently identical quotes differ by twenty percent. Ask for one number, tax-inclusive, with the rate stated, and compare like for like.
Decide the purpose, the recipient list of fifty, the budget in AMD including VAT, and the date it must be in hand. Purpose decides the item more than taste does: a client gift and an internal team shirt are the same fifty units with completely different specifications.
Send a structured size form and get it back in three days. Ask for quotes on two products rather than eight, at fifty units, one colour. Comparing two real options is more useful than scrolling a catalogue you will not order from.
Send vector artwork, get a digital proof, and read it against the brief. Confirm where the logo sits, how big it is relative to the chest, and what happens to it on a seam. This is the stage where a colour change is free.
Seven to fifteen working days for screen printing, depending on the queue. Count every unit against the size run before it leaves the shop, keep three spares, and distribute from one collection point so you can catch a problem while the order is still replaceable.
For unit price, close to it. Fifty sits at the floor of the three cheap methods and far below the point where setup amortises, so the same polo can cost two to three times more per unit than at five hundred. For logistics it is the easiest number in the market, because two cartons travel in a van with no freight booking at all.
Often yes. DTG has no setup fee and runs from one piece, so fifty units avoid the screen charge entirely. You pay more per unit and get far more colour options and a shorter lead time. For a pilot or a deadline that matters, that trade is usually worth making.
Technically yes, practically no. Two methods means two setups, two proofs, two delivery windows and two colour matches to manage across fifty garments. Fixed costs punish splitting at small volumes more than at any other point in the range.
Three to five at this quantity. A spare costs a small fraction of a second setup, and it covers the common failures: a wrong size, a damaged print, a person who adds themselves to the list after the fact. Redistributing from the same run is free; reordering later is not.
Order for the fifty and treat the balance as inventory. Used items can be reissued next season to new joiners, which in a growing team happens more often than anyone plans for, and it makes the original fifty the cheapest onboarding kit you will ever buy.
Not reliably. Volume pricing depends on the actual quantity in the run, so a fifty-unit price does not carry to five hundred. What does carry is the setup: if you keep the vector artwork, the chosen colour specification and the supplier's record, the second run pays only for production. Ask for the artwork files to be handed over with the goods, in editable format.
No. Corp-Merch is an independent merchandise production and supplier company. We produce branded programmes for corporate buyers in the market, and we are not a partner, sponsor or authorised supplier of any bank, university, venue or industry body.
Corp-Merch is an independent merchandise production and supplier company. Figures quoted here are typical production and setup ranges for the Armenian market and depend on quantity, method and garment. Nothing on this page represents a client, bank or event organiser, and no programme described implies a partnership, sponsorship or official supply relationship.
Send us the product, the decoration method, the quantity and the date. We will quote setup and unit cost separately so you can see exactly what fifty units costs, and tell you honestly if a different method or a different quantity would serve you better.