Bulk Custom Blanket Order for Booster Club Phoenix Guide

A line on the October booster meeting agenda: "Blanket order, decide tonight." Thirty families in the room, a home tournament three weekends out, and someone asks whether the club can just order a hundred. Somebody else, usually the person holding the checkbook, says that bulk orders are for the big schools and there is no way thirty families moves that kind of volume.

That second person is half right, and the half they have wrong is the unit they are counting in.

Thirty families is not thirty blankets

A production run starts at 75 Signature blankets per design, and Large and XL count together toward that number. Mix sizes however you like; the total is what matters. The Lux starts at 50 on its own. And if 75 is genuinely out of reach, Quick Ship starts at 25 blankets, which is the door most small clubs actually walk through.

Now, that figure is more than two blankets per family, and a club that counts only its own roster will miss it. But the roster is not the buyer list. Count the grandparents in Sun City who have been asking what to send for Christmas, the aunts, the alumni who played on that court ten years ago, and the parents on the other side of the net at a home tournament, who are also looking for something to buy. Two blankets per family is normal the year a kid is a senior.

Phoenix adds one thing a custom blanket fundraiser for youth sports teams in other states does not deal with: nobody here buys a blanket in August. The Valley's selling window opens when the 7 p.m. games turn cold in late October and runs through the brackets and into spring banquets. An October meeting is good timing. September would have been better.

So the number is reachable. What it does not tell you is who pays for that first run before a single supporter hands over a dollar.

Two questions decide bulk or pre-sale: a date, and the cash

Here is the test I would apply before the vote, and it only has two parts. Do you have a named date on the calendar when you will sell from a table? And has the board already voted to release the money? Two out of two means you can buy in bulk. One out of two means you run the pre-sale.

How does a pre-sale blanket fundraiser work, mechanically? Families order through your store first, and the blankets get made once those orders cover the production run. Nothing leaves your account up front.

	Bulk order	Pre-sale
Cash out before production	Wholesale, paid up front	$0 up front
Minimum to start	75 Signature, or 25 on Quick Ship	Orders have to cover the run
Production time	6 to 8 weeks standard	6 to 8 weeks standard
Rush available	Yes, 2 to 3 weeks on bulk Signature; 1 to 2 weeks on Quick Ship	No rush on a pre-sale
Who holds unsold stock	Your club	Nobody; it is not made
If it does not sell	The blankets are yours to sell later or give	Every supporter refunded the product price, group owes nothing
Who sets the deadline	You do, by when you sell	The run fills or it does not

The refund line matters more than it reads. On a failed pre-sale, supporters get the product price back automatically and lose only the card processing fee, and your club owes nothing at all. That is the floor under the risk, and it is why a coordinator with no board vote in hand should never front the money personally to make the date work.

Our example club has both: a tournament weekend and roughly $1,000 the board can release. So it is in the bulk lane. What does it actually keep per blanket?

What the club keeps on 75 blankets, written all the way out

This is where how much profit a school can make selling custom blankets stops being a percentage and becomes a number you can read out loud at a meeting. Work it in five steps, backward from the bill.

1. Name the bill in dollars. For our club it is $900: tournament entry fees and warmups. Not "fundraising," not "the account." A number with a thing attached to it.
2. Outlay. Seventy-five Signature at the 75 to 149 tier is $12.50 each, so 75 × $12.50 = $937.50. That figure is the whole figure: shipping is included, and there is no setup fee, no design fee and no platform fee.
3. Set retail. Groups commonly sell the Signature between $20 and $35. Say $30 for this run. You set this price in your store, not us.
4. Find the point where your money is back. $937.50 ÷ $30 = approximately 32 blankets sold. That is the number the board should hear, because 32 is a tournament table, not a season.
5. Count what you keep after that. $30 − $12.50 = $17.50 on every blanket. Sell the run and 75 × $17.50 = $1,312.50 in the account.

The objection we see in every Phoenix booster meeting is that $30 is too much for some families in our community. That is a real concern and it deserves real arithmetic rather than reassurance. Price the same blanket at $20 and the break-even point moves. It lands at approximately 47 blankets. After that you keep $7.50 on each one. You sell more units for less money. Whether that trade is right depends on your school, and you know your school.

One more thing about year two, because clubs that sell out year one almost always go bigger. At 150 or more, the Signature drops to $10.50. Sell at $25. You keep $14.50 on each blanket. Same work, same table, better tier.

A note on card processing so nobody is surprised at checkout: it is 2.9% plus 30¢ per order, added at checkout and paid by the supporter. That fee goes to Stripe, not to us.

Thirty-two blankets at the tournament table puts the club's money back. The order still does not say which blanket.

Which blanket goes on the order, and which one the board approves fastest

Product	Wholesale	Minimum	Typical retail	Production	Fits
Signature 50"x60"	$12.50, $10.50 at 150+	75 (L+XL combined)	$20 to $35	6 to 8 weeks, rush 2 to 3	The default run
Signature XL 60"x70"	$15, $13 at 150+	Counts in the same 75	$25 to $40	6 to 8 weeks, rush 2 to 3	Senior night upsell
Lux 60"x80"	$30 flat, any quantity	50	$55 to $80	6 to 8 weeks, no rush	Auction item, coach gift
Beach towel 30"x60"	$15, $14 higher tier	50	Your call	2 to 3 weeks	Seasons running into May
Rally towel 15"x18"	$4.25 flat	100	Your call	2 to 3 weeks	Add-on to a blanket order

The Signature is the one a board approves without a debate, because $30 retail lands where families actually buy, and because the XL rides in the same run without triggering a second minimum. It is 300 GSM minky plush, printed edge to edge on one side and soft plush on the other, machine washable. That is why custom blankets work as a school fundraiser item at all: it is the thing still on the couch at graduation, not a tub of cookie dough gone by Thanksgiving.

Should you just order Lux and be done? No, and here is the trade. The Lux is a genuinely better object: two layers, printed on both sides, knit binding. At $30 wholesale flat with no volume tier, it has to retail high to be worth selling. That is an auction blanket and a coach's gift, not a table at a middle school tournament. It also cannot be rushed.

If you want to see what a run of Signature actually looks like before you spec it, design ideas that actually sell is worth ten minutes.

The order is now specified down to size and quantity, and not one thread of it exists until somebody sends a logo.

From a logo on your phone to boxes on the cafeteria table

1. Send one high-quality image of your mascot or logo. Designs come back in 12 hours or less, with your colors pulled straight from the artwork and suggested for you. That is the whole input from you at this stage. Custom blanket design turnaround for a school fundraiser is not the bottleneck; the board meeting is.
2. Approve a design and launch. Your store can go live the same day. Store and payout setup is under 20 minutes, and the three steps together run under an hour.
3. Pick your production speed. Rush on bulk Signature is 2 to 3 weeks. Standard is 6 to 8 weeks. That is the difference between selling at this tournament and selling at next season's, and in October in the Valley that difference is the whole season.
4. Receive one shipment. The order ships free to one address you choose, blankets individually wrapped. No sorting night. I need you to really hear that, because the sorting night is what breaks coordinators, not the selling.

While you are at work, the platform sends the reminder emails to your list, builds social posts around your actual design, and gives you print-ready QR posters and flyers to download and tape up. You are not writing any of that at 10 p.m. Cash and checks still work for the grandparent who will not order online; record them in the dashboard so your totals and your inventory count stay right.

Then it is your table at the home tournament: wrapped blankets in two stacks, a printed QR poster taped to the front, a clipboard for the two people who brought checks.

When we would tell you not to order

If some of those blankets do not leave the table, they are yours. We do not buy them back. That is the one real risk in this, and I would rather you hear it now than in April.

So: no date on the calendar, or no board vote releasing the money, run the pre-sale instead. It costs nothing up front, and if the run does not fill, every supporter is refunded the product price and the group owes nothing.

Rush is bulk Signature only (the Lux can't be rushed, and neither can a pre-sale). If your date is six weeks out and you haven't ordered, standard production is the only option. Plan accordingly. Shipping is free to one address you choose; we do not ship to supporters' homes individually, and a club that needs that should not order from us. There is no per-item name personalization on blankets or towels, and no back design on Signature Large or XL, since back printing is Lux only. Rally towels ride along with a blanket order and are not a sale of their own. Break-even is approximate and moves the moment you change your retail price. Raffle rules and your group's tax status are not ours to advise on.

A custom blanket fundraiser for schools in Phoenix that gets sold to a club with no sell date is not a win for anybody.

Walk into the November meeting with the artwork printed and the sample folded on the table. The vote stops being about whether blankets are a good idea and becomes about a date and a number. Send the mascot image tonight: the design comes back free, and a sample ships immediately to anyone who asks.