Sports clubs order custom merch constantly — playing kits, training gear, supporter tees, presentation polos, end-of-season hoodies. Most clubs muddle through well enough, but the same five mistakes show up again and again, costing clubs money, time, and goodwill from members.
Here they are, and what to do instead.
Mistake 1: Choosing the wrong fabric for the application
This is the most common and most expensive mistake clubs make. Cotton is comfortable, familiar, and easy to print. It's also wrong for most training and game-day applications.
Cotton absorbs moisture and holds it. In a playing kit or training shirt, that means a garment that gets heavier, colder, and more uncomfortable as the game goes on. It also takes longer to dry between sessions.
For playing and training applications, you want performance fabrics: polyester or polyester-blend materials with moisture-wicking properties. They're lighter, dry faster, and stay comfortable under exertion. Many modern performance blanks are also treated for odour resistance, which matters more than most committee members want to admit.
Cotton is absolutely fine for supporter tees, casual club gear, and off-field items. But if it's going on a player or a coach during activity, use performance fabric.
The fix: Before you choose a blank, decide exactly how it'll be used. Playing kit and training gear — performance fabric. Everything else — cotton or cotton-blend is fine.
Mistake 2: Ordering too few sizes in the middle
The classic size run mistake: order equal numbers across all sizes, or weight toward larger sizes because "it's a sports club and everyone's big." The result is a pile of 2XLs and 3XLs that don't move and a run-out of mediums and larges that leaves members disappointed.
A realistic size run for a mixed adult sports club looks something like this: 5% XS, 15% S, 30% M, 30% L, 15% XL, 5% 2XL. That will need adjustment based on your specific membership — a women's netball club will look very different to a men's rugby league club — but the general principle holds: the middle sizes move faster than most people expect.
The fix: Look at the actual demographics of your membership before building your size run. Count members by gender and approximate size range. Weight your order accordingly, and always keep a small buffer in your most popular sizes.
Mistake 3: Submitting blurry or low-resolution artwork
Every club has the same logo on file: a JPEG that's been emailed around for fifteen years, screenshotted from the website, and exported from someone's Word document. It looks fine on screen. It looks terrible printed at 30cm wide on a polo shirt.
Screen printing and embroidery require clean, high-resolution artwork. For screen printing, that means a vector file — AI, EPS, or PDF — where the logo is made of mathematical shapes rather than pixels. Vector artwork can be scaled to any size without losing quality.
For embroidery, the logo needs to be digitised — converted from any format into a stitch file that tells the embroidery machine exactly what to do. A professional decorator will do this for you, but they need clean artwork to work from. Handing them a blurry JPEG makes their job harder and the result worse.
The fix: Ask your club's founding designer or your current graphic designer for the original vector file. If no vector exists, budget for a redraw. It's a one-off cost and worth every dollar.
Mistake 4: Leaving it too late
Custom decorated apparel takes time. A proper screen print run needs 2–3 weeks from artwork approval to delivery. Embroidery can take similar lead times. If you're adding player names, personalisation, or ordering at a busy time of year (Christmas, end-of-season, pre-season), add a week or two on top.
Clubs regularly try to compress this timeline because the AGM decision was late, or the pre-season is earlier than expected, or someone forgot to place the order. The results are rushed jobs with less opportunity for revisions, premium pricing for expedited production, or gear that arrives after the first game.
The fix: Build a simple calendar for your club's annual merch cycle. Know when you need playing kit delivered and count back 4–5 weeks for the order deadline. Brief your decorator before that deadline, not on it.
Mistake 5: Not getting a digital proof before production
A digital proof is a visual mock-up of your finished product showing the decoration placement, colours, and artwork before a single item goes through production. It's the last chance to catch mistakes before they become expensive.
Clubs sometimes skip the proof review — they're busy, they trust the decorator, they're in a hurry. Then the shirts arrive with the logo slightly off-centre, or the wrong shade of blue, or a name spelled incorrectly. At that point, the club is in a difficult position: accept the mistake, or negotiate a reprint.
Always review your proof. Check: artwork accuracy, colour references, placement and sizing, spelling of any names or text, and which garment and colour the decoration is going on. Take two minutes and do it properly.
The fix: Make proof approval a mandatory step in your club's ordering process. Don't approve a proof on behalf of the club without showing it to at least one other committee member. Two sets of eyes catch more errors than one.
The common thread
Almost all club merch mistakes come from the same root cause: not enough planning time and not enough communication with the decorator. Brief early, supply clean artwork, review your proof, and know your size run. Those four disciplines will eliminate 90% of the problems clubs encounter.
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