# Team shirts without a minimum order

> Why custom apparel usually starts at 48 pieces, why it doesn't have to, and how to make shirts for a team of four without a cupboard full of leftovers in three sizes nobody wears.

August 15, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/team-shirts-no-minimum

The average new company in the US starts with about three people. Nearly nine in ten American
businesses have fewer than twenty. And the standard quote for custom shirts starts somewhere
around forty-eight pieces, in a size run designed for a company you don't have yet.

So everyone does the same arithmetic, orders three times what they need, and puts the rest in a
cupboard. Two years later the cupboard contains a logo you no longer use.

## Why do custom shirts usually have a minimum?

Because of how they've traditionally been made, not because of anything about your order.

Screen printing — the workhorse of the industry — front-loads its cost. Someone burns a screen
for each color in your design, mixes the inks, and registers the press. That setup takes the
same time and money whether the run is twelve shirts or twelve hundred, so a shop that accepts
twelve either loses money or charges you as if you'd ordered a hundred. The minimum isn't
gatekeeping; it's the setup cost showing through.

That's a fact about one production method, though — and it stops being the binding constraint
once a piece can be produced individually. Which is the entire premise here: each item is made
when it's bought, so a run of three is just three runs of one.

## Can I really order three?

Three, one, or two hundred. There's no minimum and nothing is held as stock — every piece is
produced after the order exists, which is also why there's no leftover inventory to be wrong
about later.

The practical ceiling is high enough that you'll hit your budget before you hit it: up to 99 of
any one item in a single order, and up to 20 distinct items in one bag. For most teams that's
one design across every size anyone actually wants, twice over.

If you need more than that — a whole company, an event, a run for a conference — email
[support@justog.club](mailto:support@justog.club) and we'll set it up with you directly. Large
orders aren't an exception we grudgingly allow; they're just a different conversation than a
checkout button is good at.

## What about different sizes?

Each line in the bag carries its own size and color, so a single order can be four smalls, six
mediums, three XLs and one 3XL of the same design. You aren't buying a "size run" — you're
buying the shirts the people on your team actually wear.

This sounds mundane and it's most of the value. The classic dead swag isn't the wrong design,
it's fourteen larges in a company where everyone wears medium.

## What if someone joins next month?

You order one more.

That's the whole answer, and it's the part that's genuinely different from a bulk order. New
hire in March, another in July, someone loses theirs in a move — each of those is a normal
one-piece order rather than a decision to either raid the cupboard or run a whole new batch.

It also means you're allowed to change your mind. A design that made sense at eight people can
be replaced at twenty without anyone having to feel bad about the sixty shirts still in a box.

## What should a team shirt actually say?

The ones people wear are almost never the ones with the logo blown up on the chest.

Look at what teams actually keep:

- **An inside joke, in one of the two registers that hold up.** The thing someone said in a
  meeting that became shorthand — set completely straight, as a crest or a plaque, or set as
  evidence, with the face and the hour it was said. Either way it's a badge for the people who
  were there and a mystery to everyone else, which is [the whole
  mechanism](/stories/team-inside-joke-shirt).
- **The number.** Founding year, launch date, the version number of the thing you shipped.
- **The motto you actually repeat**, not the one on the careers page.
- **The logo small.** One-color, left chest, no tagline. Reads as a uniform in the good sense.

The failure mode is the conference giveaway: full-color logo, centered, large, with a URL under
it. Nobody wears the URL.

### The founder's shirt

There's a version of this that's an order of one: the shirt for the thing you're building, made
before the company is big enough for anyone to hand you swag. It's a slightly ridiculous object
and also a genuinely good one — the same instinct as a band printing its own name before anyone
has heard of it, and made-to-order is what makes an order of one an ordinary thing to place.

## Can I use our own logo?

Yes — it's yours. Upload it, and it can go on as it is or be worked into something less
corporate.

The rule that matters is the obvious one: your own marks are fine, and someone else's aren't,
including the ones an image model will cheerfully produce if you ask. A parody of a famous logo
is still that logo's problem to have. (Same rule as everywhere else on the site — see the
[content policy](/legal/content-policy).)

If you don't have a logo yet, that's not a blocker. Plenty of good team shirts have no logo on
them at all.

## How do I actually get them made?

Upload the artwork on [JustOG](/) — or describe what you want and have it drawn — then pick the
garment, the color, and a size for each person. You'll see it on the real piece before you order,
and it's produced to order and shipped to you.

Then order one more in July, when you need to.