Blank Hoodies and Sweatshirts: Fleece, Weight and What They Cost to Make

Fleece is where blanks buyers most often overpay, because the words on a listing — heavyweight, premium, ultra — describe nothing measurable. This page gives you the measurable version: what the fabric is, what the weight bands mean, which construction details actually separate a good garment from a cheap one, and what the whole thing costs to make. It sits under the sourcing economics behind blank apparel pricing, and the tee equivalent is how to read a blank tee spec.

Fleece construction is the decision that drives everything about blank hoodies

Every sweat fabric worth buying is a loopback knit: a knit structure with float loops on the inside face. What happens to those loops afterwards is the whole distinction.

• French terry. The loops are left uncut and unbrushed. Technically un-napped fleece. It keeps more of the knit's stretch and recovery, dries fast, and reads lighter and cleaner. Typical weight starts around 280 gsm.
• Brushed loopback fleece. The same loopback structure with the inside face brushed or napped, raising a soft pile that traps air. Warmer, softer, heavier, slower to dry. This is what most people mean by a hoodie, and 320 gsm is the standard weight.
• Sherpa. A fluffy, usually 100 percent polyester construction made to mimic wool fleece. In apparel it is a lining, used inside a hood or a jacket body, not a shell fabric. If a listing calls a whole garment sherpa, ask what the outer face is.

Two knits get confused with these and behave differently. Polar fleece and microfleece are double-faced polyester pile fabrics, not cotton loopback, and they neither print nor drape like a sweat fabric. And the rib used for cuffs, hem and collar is a separate double-knit structure entirely, chosen because its width extensibility is roughly twice that of single jersey — which is exactly why it grips a wrist and returns.

The practical takeaway: the words French terry and fleece describe a finishing decision, not a quality level. A 320 gsm brushed fleece and a 320 gsm French terry weigh the same and cost the mill similar money. They feel completely different, and only one of them is right for your product.

Blank sweatshirts by weight: 280 gsm to 400+ gsm

US listings quote ounces per square yard, mills quote grams per square metre, and the conversion is 1 oz/yd² = 33.9 g/m².

Fleece weight bands, conversions and what each is for.

Three cost consequences follow from that column, none of them on the listing. Fabric cost moves nearly linearly with weight — 320 to 400 gsm is a 25 percent increase in fabric consumed, and fabric is the largest line on a fleece cost sheet. Freight per unit rises with bulk, because fleece volumes out a container long before it weighs out. And drying and finishing time rises, which is a factory-throughput cost at the top of the range.

Anything above about 500 gsm on a hoodie listing deserves scrutiny — it is usually the finished garment's total weight in grams rather than the fabric's gsm. Conversions across the full range are in the GSM fabric weight chart with oz/yd² conversions.

Pullover, zip and crewneck: choosing between blank zip up hoodies and a blank hooded sweatshirt

Three body types cover almost the whole category, and they are genuinely different garments to make.

Blank zip up hoodies deserve their own inspection routine. The zipper is the single most expensive thing that can fail after decoration, when the garment is no longer returnable. Check the zipper brand and gauge, whether the slider auto-locks, whether the tape colour matches the body in daylight rather than under warehouse fluorescents, and whether the zipper is sewn into a stabilised placket rather than directly into stretchy fleece. Then close it and check that the two front panels meet level at the hem.

A blank hooded sweatshirt and a crewneck sit at opposite ends of print economics. The crewneck gives you a clean, flat, uninterrupted chest panel. A pullover hood puts a pouch pocket, a drawcord and a hood seam in the way of anything below chest height.

What separates a high quality blank hoodie from a cheap one

Weight is the number everyone quotes and the least diagnostic. Here is what actually differs, in the order it will bite you.

Rib quality and recovery. The collar, cuffs and hem are rib knit, and rib is where cheap fleece fails first. 2×2 rib has deeper wales and more recovery bulk than 1×1. Ask for the rib specification and the rib gsm explicitly — it is frequently absent from listings, and published rib weight ranges should be treated as indicative until the supplier confirms theirs. Pull a cuff to twice its width and let go: if it does not return, every garment in that case will have loose cuffs after ten wears.

Drawcord and eyelets. Cord thickness, tipping and whether the eyelets are reinforced or punched straight through single-ply fleece. Unreinforced eyelets tear.

Pocket bartacks. A pouch pocket takes the whole weight of two hands and a phone. Both pocket mouths should carry a bartack at each end. Their absence is the cheapest thing to check and one of the most reliable signals of the tier you are actually in.

Shoulder-to-shoulder tape. A woven tape across the back neck seam that stops the neckline stretching out. Its presence is a good proxy for the rest of the make.

Hood construction. Two-panel hoods are cheaper; three-panel hoods sit better on a head. Self-fabric lining versus jersey lining changes both the hand and the cost.

Armhole type. Set-in, raglan or drop shoulder is a silhouette decision that also determines how flat the garment lies on a print pallet.

Why a hoodie costs two to three times a tee: the worked cost build

Two inputs explain the whole ratio. A hoodie consumes roughly 1.1 kg of fleece against a 180 gsm tee's 0.27 kg of jersey, and it takes 21 standard minutes to sew against a tee's 8.5.

Worked FOB cost build, 320 gsm brushed loopback fleece pullover hoodie, export factory.

Against the canonical tee's $4.30 FOB, that is a ratio of 2.4 to 1 — consistent with the two-to-three-times rule of thumb, and now explained rather than asserted. Note that fabric is 59 percent of FOB on a hoodie against 51 percent on a tee, above the 35 to 50 percent band typical of basics. Weight does that: the heavier the garment, the more the cost sheet becomes a fabric purchase with some sewing attached.

One caveat that will save you an argument. The $5.50/kg above is a yarn-plus-conversion basis. Mills also quote finished dyed fabric per kg, which for jersey runs around $8.15/kg. A $5.50 quote and an $8.15 quote can describe the same fabric, so always confirm which basis you are being quoted on before comparing two mills.

Also worth knowing before you switch: CM cost is SMV times cost-per-minute divided by line efficiency, and efficiency is the variable factories quote optimistically. Ask for the assumed efficiency; a realistic export line runs 60 to 75 percent, not 100.

Printing on heavy fleece: what changes

Decoration behaves differently on brushed fleece than on jersey, and the differences cost money if nobody plans for them.

• Nap. Brushing raises fibre. Ink laid straight onto a raised nap sinks and fibres poke back through, so heavy fleece usually needs a smoothing pass or an underbase.
• Dye migration on blends. Most volume fleece is a 50/50 cotton-polyester blend, and polyester is coloured with disperse dye, which carries known sublimation and migration risks. Under cure heat that dye can move into the ink film and discolour it, which is why blend fleece needs low-cure inks or a blocker underbase. On a blank black hoodie in a blend, a white print going pink weeks later is this mechanism.
• Thickness and cure. Heavy fleece holds more mass and more moisture, so it takes longer to reach cure temperature through the garment. Cure is measured at the ink film, not at the belt setting.
• Pallet fit and seams. Pouch pockets, hood seams and zippers restrict the usable print area and make placement less repeatable than on a flat tee.

What high quality blank hoodies wholesale pricing actually contains

A published wholesale fleece price contains the blank brand's factory cost, the duty it paid on its own FOB, its margin, and the distributor's margin. None of those are visible and none are negotiable at case quantity.

Published low-tier wholesale prices for blank fleece at one US distributor, accessed 16 August 2026. These move with cotton, freight and season.

That is a three-fold spread on garments that look similar in a photograph. Most of it is fabric weight, fibre content and cotton share, plus brand. Some of it is the construction detail in the section above, which is exactly why the detail is worth checking.

When to stop buying blank hoodies in bulk and have your own made

Same arithmetic as the tee, different numbers. A cotton knit hooded sweatshirt classifies under HTS 6110.20.20 at 16.5 percent MFN, plus a 10 percent Section 301 forced-labor tariff for India as of 16 August 2026 — 26.5 percent on entered value. Verify against the current HTSUS before relying on it.

Landed cost per unit of a custom 320 gsm hoodie by order quantity, one style, one colour, India origin, non-peak ocean freight, as of 16 August 2026.

The fixed block is $3,695: development at $2,000 for one fleece style, plus broker entry, ISF, bond, pre-shipment inspection, delivery and insurance. Development is higher than a tee's because a hoodie's first sample runs $300 to $600 against a tee's $200 to $350, over two to four rounds. Everything else is linear:

$10.20 FOB + $0.45 freight + $1.68 MFN duty + $1.02 Section 301 duty + $0.035 MPF + $0.013 HMF = $13.40 per unit.

That $13.40 is the floor. Set it against the blank prices above and the decision resolves cleanly:

Break-even order quantity at which a custom hoodie undercuts a blank, by the blank's wholesale price.

Fleece crosses over far earlier than tees do, and that is the most useful fact on this page. Because a hoodie's absolute price is high, a modest percentage saving is worth real money per unit, so the fixed development block clears in a few hundred pieces rather than a few thousand. If you are buying premium fleece blanks above about $18, your own hoodie is probably cheaper before you reach 800 units — and it is yours.

Three things to weigh against that. Factory MOQ for hoodies and sweats is typically 500 pieces per colour, set by the dye lot rather than the sewing line, as explained in why a custom colour carries a dye-lot minimum. A first order runs 15 to 20 weeks from PO to a US DC for India, against next-day from a distributor. And you become the importer of record, with the obligations set out in landed cost for apparel imports. The production route is covered in having hoodies and sweatshirts made to your own spec.

Terms people use for the same product

Listing and search language in this category is unusually scattered, and none of the variants signal a real product difference. Blank hoodies, blanks hoodies, blank sweatshirts and blank hooded sweatshirt all describe the same undecorated fleece garment, with the hood being the only genuine variable. The wholesale phrasings — hoodie blanks wholesale, wholesale hoodie blanks, blank wholesale hoodies, wholesale blank hoodies, blank hoodies wholesale and blank hoodies in bulk — all mean the same thing: buy a case rather than a piece. Specification vocabulary used above is defined in the Yarnstick glossary of sourcing and trade terms.

Frequently asked questions