Blank T-Shirts Wholesale: How to Read the Spec Before You Read the Price

Most guides to buying blank tees compare brands. This one explains what the spec fields mean, what each upgrade costs the factory that made it, and where the rest of the wholesale price comes from. It sits under the sourcing economics behind blank apparel pricing, and it is written for someone deciding between two style numbers on a distributor site, or deciding whether to stay in the blanks channel at all.

What the spec on a case of blank t shirts actually tells you

Every distributor lists roughly the same nine fields. Here is what each one is doing.

The nine spec fields on a blank tee, what they mean, and why they cost money.

Two of those deserve a note. Pre-shrunk is a process, not a promise. Untreated 100 percent ring-spun cotton jersey shrinks 5.0 to 7.5 percent; compacting brings it into the ±3 percent tolerance most brands write. Shrinkage is tested under AATCC TM135 in a North American top-loading machine or ISO 6330 in a European front-loader, and the two are not interchangeable — a supplier quoting an ISO number against your AATCC spec has answered a different question.

And weight is measured on finished, conditioned fabric, per ASTM D3776. Greige gsm and finished gsm differ by 5 to 15 percent, so a spec that does not say "finished" has not specified anything.

Blank t shirt weight tiers, from 4.3 oz to heavyweight

US listings quote ounces per square yard; mills quote grams per square metre. The conversion is 1 oz/yd² = 33.9 g/m², and it is the single most useful number in this article.

Blank tee weight tiers with conversions and intended use.

Fabric consumption scales with weight, which is what makes the cost effect predictable. A 180 gsm tee consumes 0.27 kg of finished dyed jersey including about 10 percent cutting wastage. Scale that: 146 gsm is roughly 0.22 kg, 203 gsm roughly 0.30 kg. Full conversions across the range are in the GSM fabric weight chart with oz/yd² conversions.

What each spec upgrade actually costs the factory

This is the table nobody publishes, and it is why the blanks market has the price spread it has. Finished dyed 180 gsm cotton jersey costs about $8.15/kg, and a basic tee is 8.5 standard minutes of sewing at roughly $0.08 a minute.

Cost effect of each spec upgrade at FOB level, one 180 gsm cotton crew tee. Derived from the canonical tee cost sheet; treat the yarn and combing rows as derived ranges rather than quoted prices.

Add the whole ladder and a commodity 4.3 oz open-end carded tubular tee becomes a 6.0 oz combed ring-spun side-seamed tee for roughly $1.10 to $1.65 of extra FOB. The canonical tee at 180 gsm combed ring-spun costs $4.30 FOB all in.

Now compare that against the market. At one US distributor on 16 August 2026, commodity heavyweight tees listed from $2.36 to $2.71, a heavy cotton branded tee at $3.93, and garment-dyed heavyweights at $8.51 to $13.96. The factory-level spec gap is under $1.65. The wholesale gap is over $11. Everything in between is scale, dye method, brand and two layers of channel margin — which is the argument for reading the spec before the price, and occasionally for leaving the channel.

Why a blank white t shirt is priced differently from a colour

This is the most useful thing in the category and almost nobody says it: white is not a colour, commercially. It is the absence of a dye lot.

A coloured blank carries all of this:

• A dye lot with a minimum load of 300 to 500 kg of fabric per custom colour at a general export dyehouse, and 800 to 1,200 kg at a Vietnamese tier-1 mill.
• A lab dip cycle — typically two to three rounds, four to five for saturated reds, neons and deep navies — before anyone cuts anything.
• Shade matching between body fabric, neck rib, thread and any pocket, all of which are dyed separately and must land inside the same tolerance.
• Shade banding across rolls, and the risk that panels cut from different rolls end up in the same garment.

A blank white t shirt carries none of them. It is bleached and optically brightened, not dyed, so there is no per-colour dye minimum, no Pantone approval cycle, no metamerism argument in the lightbox and no panel-to-panel shade tolerance to police. That is why white almost always sits at the bottom of a blanks colour price ladder and why it is the colour most reliably in stock. The same mechanism runs in reverse on heather greys and neons, which need extra process steps or dyed-yarn blends and sit at the top.

Two practical consequences. First, if you are testing a design, test it in white — you are buying the cheapest, most available version of the garment. Second, opacity matters more in white than in any other colour. A 146 gsm blank white tee is noticeably see-through where the same fabric in navy is not, which is why a blank white tee is usually the wrong place to save a dollar on weight. The dye-lot economics behind all of this are set out in why a custom colour carries a dye-lot minimum, and the premium end of the colour market is covered in garment-dyed blanks.

Tubular and side-seamed construction, and what it does to a print

A tubular tee is cut from a body knitted as a continuous tube on a circular machine: no side seams, fewer operations, lower cost. A side-seamed tee is cut as separate front and back panels and joined down each side.

The trade-offs, per manufacturer guidance from BELLA+CANVAS, are consistent:

• Torquing. Single jersey knitted in the round carries residual yarn twist, so after washing the side of the garment rotates. The industry acceptance limit is around 5 percent displacement, and more than 4 degrees or 5 percent is treated as a major failure. Side seams stabilise against it; a tubular body has nothing holding it straight.
• Fit. Tube diameters come in machine-cylinder steps, which produces uneven jumps between sizes, and a tube cannot have a shaped armhole or a graded neck opening.
• Printing. Side seams give a press operator a straight registration edge, which speeds set-up and improves placement consistency across a run.

Tubular is not automatically wrong. It is cheaper, it is the traditional construction for a boxy heavyweight, and for a single-colour front print on a short run the fit penalty may be irrelevant. Know which one you bought.

Fit blocks: why two blank tees at the same weight fit differently

Weight and yarn tell you about the fabric. The block — the underlying pattern — tells you about the garment, and it is the thing you cannot change in the blanks channel.

• Classic. Longer body, fuller sleeve, straight side line. Reads traditional. Frequently tubular.
• Modern / retail. Trimmer through the body and armhole, shorter sleeve, side-seamed. What most retail brands mean by a unisex tee.
• Boxy / streetwear. Wide chest relative to length, dropped shoulder, short sleeve. Usually 203 gsm or heavier because a light fabric will not hold the silhouette.

Since every brand grades to its own block, the only reliable comparison is the published points of measure for the specific style number — chest at one inch below armhole, body length from high point shoulder, sleeve length, shoulder width. Compare those four numbers in the size you sell most and you will learn more in two minutes than from any amount of hand-feel description. Do it again whenever you change style number, because blocks differ within a brand as well as between brands.

How wholesale pricing tiers work on blank shirts wholesale

Blank distributors price in tiers, not by negotiation. The structure is consistent across the channel:

1. Single piece. The highest price. Convenience buying.
2. Dozen. A modest step down.
3. Case. The published "low as" figure on most listings is the full-case or contract tier. Case packs are typically 24 to 72 pieces and are often size-assorted, which is why case buying and size-curve planning have to be done together.
4. Contract or programme pricing. Negotiated against annual volume, usually with a national account.

Two things this structure means in practice. The advertised low price is real but conditional — you get it at case quantity in a stocked colour, not on a mixed order of six sizes. And the tier ladder flattens quickly: the distance from dozen to case is much larger than from case to contract, so most buyers capture nearly all the available saving at the case tier.

When t shirt blanks wholesale stops being the cheaper answer

The blanks channel wins on speed, cash and flexibility. It loses on unit cost once volume is real and the blank you are buying is a premium one. Here is the line, using the same tee spec as above, produced in India and landed at a US DC.

Duty as of 16 August 2026 on HTS 6109.10.00 is 16.5 percent MFN plus a 10 percent Section 301 forced-labor tariff for India, a combined 26.5 percent on entered value. Verify against the current HTSUS before relying on it.

Landed cost per unit of a custom 180 gsm cotton tee by order quantity, one style, one colour, India origin, non-peak ocean freight, as of 16 August 2026.

The fixed block — development, broker entry, ISF, bond, inspection, delivery and insurance — totals $2,895 and amortises away. What does not amortise is FOB, freight and duty: $4.300 + $0.450 + $0.710 + $0.430 + $0.015 + $0.005 = $5.910 per unit. That is a floor, so any blank under $5.91 wins at every quantity, and a premium blank at $8.51 is beaten from about 1,100 units of one style in one colour. The full derivation and the break-even table by blank price are on the sourcing economics behind blank apparel pricing; the import lines are broken out in landed cost for apparel imports.

Terms people use for the same product

The market has not settled on one name, and search behaviour reflects that. Blank t shirts, blank tshirts, blank tees, blank tee shirts and blank shirts all describe the same undecorated garment. "Blank shirt" alone occasionally means a woven button-down, so if you are buying wovens, say so. Related categories carry their own names: fleece is covered in blank hoodies and sweatshirts, and collared knits in blank polos and knitwear. Definitions for the spec vocabulary used here are in the Yarnstick glossary of sourcing and trade terms; the yarn side is expanded in what combed ring-spun cotton actually means.

Frequently asked questions