Wholesale Activewear & Performance Apparel: The Buyer's Guide

Cotton is comfortable right up until it is soaked. This guide covers the performance fabrics worth buying in bulk, how each one takes ink or thread, and how to spec a team, gym or event order that holds up wash after wash.

Performance Fabrics Worth Buying

• 100% polyester interlock: the workhorse. Light, fast-drying and the cheapest way to put a logo on a race, camp or league. The Sport-Tek ST350 PosiCharge Competitor Tee is the benchmark most buyers price against.
• Poly/spandex stretch knits: a little give for fitted tees, shorts and leggings where range of motion matters.
• Tri-blends and poly-cotton: softer hand and a retail drape, with less wicking than pure polyester. Good for spectator and fan gear.
• Recycled polyester: the same performance with a sustainability story that corporate programs increasingly ask for.
• Performance polos and quarter-zips: the staff-facing half of a gym or club program. See our wholesale polos page.

Fabric weight tells you more than the brand name. Anything around 3.5 to 4 oz is an event tee: cheap, breathable, disposable-feeling in the best way. Push to 5 oz or into a blend and you get something people wear off the field, which is usually what a booster club or gym actually wants.

Decorating Performance Fabric: Read This First

Polyester dye migrates. Under dryer or heat-press temperature, the dye in the garment can bleed into the ink and turn a white print pink on a red shirt, sometimes days after delivery. This is the single most common failure on activewear, and it is entirely preventable.

The fixes are well established. Screen printing on polyester needs low-bleed inks and a poly-safe underbase cured at a controlled temperature. DTF transfers sit on top of the fabric rather than soaking into it, which makes them the safer choice on dark or saturated polyester, on small runs, and on full-color artwork.

Embroidery belongs on performance polos, jackets, bags and caps rather than on lightweight knit tees, where the stitching can pucker a thin fabric. If you want a stitched look on a light performance tee, a printed faux-stitch or a heat-applied patch reads better and costs less.

Speccing a Team, Gym or Event Order

• Order a real size run. Youth through 3XL in the same style keeps a league looking uniform. Add a women's cut if coaches and parents are included.
• Decide on names and numbers early. Per-name charges and roster deadlines drive the schedule more than the shirts do.
• Lock artwork before the deadline. Our graphic design team can clean up a logo or rebuild it as vector art so it prints sharply at any size.
• Build in reorder headroom. Order 10 to 15 percent over your roster count. Late signups are guaranteed; a second small run is the expensive way to cover them.

For program and reseller pricing across an entire season, see our nationwide wholesale program.

Related Wholesale Categories

Round out the program with our wholesale t-shirts, polos, hoodies & fleece, hats & caps, bags & totes, jackets & outerwear.

Frequently Asked Questions