Allocation, not rates
How to budget a merch program
A program is not a per-piece price with a multiplier bolted on. Here is how the money actually divides between the items, the stations and the hours — and which of those three you control.
The working range
$5K – $15K
typical total program spend · every item and station on one sheet
The five levers you actually control
Item mix
The biggest lever, by a distance. A lineup weighted toward headwear and hard goods costs more per attendee than one weighted toward bags and patches, at exactly the same headcount.
Quantity model
How many of each item you expect to be claimed, not how many people are invited. Over-model and you pay for cushion nobody takes; under-model and the back of the line goes home with nothing.
Station count
Each station buys throughput, floor space and crew in a single decision. The first is $250 an hour with setup and teardown included; each one added after that is $125 an hour.
Method per item
Embroidery and laser move slower per piece than DTF or screen. A mix weighted toward the slow methods needs either a longer window or another station to hold the same throughput.
Travel
Nothing at all inside Orange County, LA and San Diego. Outside those markets a $900 travel allowance sits on its own line, so you can weigh it directly against merch spend.
How the sheet is put together
- Items, tier by tier — each one priced on its own line so money can be moved between them
- Decoration, per item — the method the material needs, costed against that item rather than averaged
- Stations and crew — $250 an hour for the first, $125 for each one after, setup and teardown inside the rate
- Quantity cushion — the spare units and size spread that keep hour four looking like hour one
- Art and proofing — file prep and a proof per design before a single blank is committed
- Travel — a $900 allowance outside Orange County, LA and San Diego; nothing inside them
Why there is no per-unit price
Two programs with identical piece counts can sit thousands apart, because the money lives in the split between a canvas tote and an embroidered cap rather than in the total number of pieces. A per-unit figure also hides the fixed half of the bill: stations and crew are paid by the hour whether the queue is ten deep or empty, so a short window with a wide mix prices nothing like a long window with a narrow one. Budget the program as two figures — what the items cost and what the floor time costs — and every trade-off becomes visible. The allocation guide works an example through, and the cost page goes further on the arithmetic.
Anchor on one item most attendees will accept, hold a real share back for a second tier, and keep something small for the people who skip apparel altogether. The programs that end up with boxes in storage are almost always the ones that put every dollar into a single hero item.
Yes. A deposit holds the date and the crew, and the balance falls around event day. The split sits on the quote beside every item line, so no part of the program gets priced after the fact.
Tell us the moment you know. Item counts flex ahead of the date, but station count is the line worth revisiting — a jump in attendance is a throughput problem well before it is a quantity problem.
Not automatically. More item types can mean more setup and sometimes another station, but they also cut waste, because guests self-select instead of accepting something they will never use. The mix usually pays for itself once you count what would otherwise be left behind.
Programs are sized to the event, but there is a floor below which trucking stations and crew to a venue stops earning its keep. If your budget sits under it we will say so and point you toward a pre-made order rather than sell you a build you do not need.
Price out your merch program
Give us the date, the city, the headcount you are planning against, and roughly what you want people walking out holding. Someone here builds the mix and sends it back itemized.