Race Director's Checklist: Ordering Event Shirts

Ordering shirts is rarely a race director's biggest job, but it is one of the easiest to leave too late. This checklist walks through the decisions in the order you will actually face them.

Step 1: Fix quantities and size splits early

Your shirt order is really two numbers: how many shirts, and in what sizes.

• Count everyone who gets a shirt. Registered runners, volunteers, staff — decide who is included and count them separately, since volunteer shirts are often a different design or color.
• Work out a size split. Registrations usually ask for a shirt size; if your event does not, ask for it in the registration form starting now. If you must estimate, a typical adult split leans heavily on M and L, with smaller tails of S, XL and a few XXL — but your own registration data always beats a generic split.
• Lock the number before you order artwork changes. Quantity changes after production starts are the most common cause of event-shirt stress.

Step 2: Design for visibility — and for your sponsors

An event shirt is a photograph waiting to happen. Design choices that read well at a distance and on camera:

• Big event name, big date. The shirt advertises next year's race every time it is worn. Make the event name and location readable from a few meters away.
• Use full color freely. With sublimation, photographs, gradients and multi-color artwork cost the same as one color, and the design can cover the whole shirt, seam to seam — a course photo, a landscape or a bold pattern makes a shirt people keep wearing.
• Sponsor logos in full color, placed deliberately. Sponsors notice whether their logo is crisp, the right color and somewhere visible — typically chest or upper back. Get each sponsor's logo as a vector file from the sponsor, not copied from a website.
• Names and numbers. For team events, challenges and run clubs, individual names or numbers in the design itself make shirts personal — and they are printed as part of the design, so check the spelling list twice.
• Remember the fabric rule. Sublimated designs show brightest on white and light fabrics. A light-colored shirt with a bold, colorful design will look sharper — in person and in race photos — than a dark shirt with light artwork.

Step 3: Work backwards from race day

Shirts take about 2–3 weeks in total: you approve a digital proof, production takes 5–10 days, then air delivery takes about 9 days. Count backwards from your event:

Approving the proof quickly matters: production cannot start until you do, so a proof sitting in an inbox for four days is four days off your buffer.

Step 4: Build in a buffer for late registrations

Every race gets late signups, a few size swaps at packet pickup, and one volunteer who was not on the list. Order a modest buffer — a handful of extra shirts in your most common sizes (usually M and L) covers most of it. Extras are also useful as thank-you shirts for sponsors and key volunteers. Ordering the buffer with the main order is far cheaper and faster than a small emergency reprint, which restarts the full production and shipping window.

Step 5: The proof check — your last fixable moment

Before production, you approve a digital proof of the shirt. Check it like a start list:

1. Every word: event name, date, city, sponsor names — spelled exactly right.
2. Every logo: correct sponsor, correct version, placed where promised.
3. Names and numbers: if shirts are personalized, compare against your registration list one by one.
4. Colors on the chosen fabric: confirm the design still reads well on the shirt color shown.
5. Sizes and quantities one last time against your final count, buffer included.