Anyone know the distribution of T-Shirt sizes ?

Factual Questions
1

I may be ordering a large quantity of T-Shirts, several hundred.

Does anyone know what would be a good distribution of sizes to order (S,M,L,XL) ? For example, for 100 shirts, order 40 medium, 25 Large, 25 XL, 10 Small or something like that. I guess there is also XXL to consider.

These would be primarily for adults, actually exclusively for adults. And an equal distibution of men and women needing them. Normal folks attending a county fair, which I assume is a pretty random sample of body shapes.

I could not find this with Google, sadly. Here’s my guess, until someone in the business sets me straight

20 S
30 M
20 L
20 XL

Thanks

2

Oops - that doesn’t add up to 100, does it.

What I meant was

20 S
20 M
30 L
20 XL
10 XXL

3

Haven’t you seen SuperSize Me? The U.S. population is FAT, man! I don’t have any hard info on this, but I think you need to skew much farther to the large end of the scale. And maybe I’ll be slammed for saying this, but for some reason, I think that county fair goers might be larger than the (already large) average American. Don’t know why, I just think so.

4

And you might find people ordering up, a size larger than they are to make sure it fits, or even larger in order to use it to sleep in.

Would a T-shirt company be able to give you a distribution?

5

Also, keep in mind that T-shirts have shrunk over the years. I have a couple of XL t-shirts from the early 90s that are noticeably smaller than brand new XL shirts today (even taking wear into account). It seems like with the explosion of “free t-shirt” offers at fast food restaurants, radio remote shows, trade shows and the like t-shirt salesmen just decided to shrink the XL a bit and give it to everyone. Hell, I’m 5’10" and 180lbs. - not skinny, but hardly “stout” even - and I can barely fit into many XL shirts. My GF is 5’3" and weighs around 120lbs. and a SM t-shirt is almost too small for her! I can’t think of many adults smaller than my GF and wonder why they even bother making SM shirts anymore.

I guess that’s also another point - who’s making the shirts? Some companies XXL seem to be the same size as other companies L. My GF just got a Piggly Wiggly t-shirt (don’t ask, she loves the logo). She ordered a L but it fits me better than a cheap XXL shirt I bought in DC two weeks ago.

6

:smack:

D’oh! That’s obviously backwards… I meant to say the older XLs are larger than XL shirts today.