Gym and fitness brand apparel: fabrics, fits, decoration and costs

Move. Four-way stretch in leggings and shorts; enough give in a tee to reach overhead without riding up. Fits are closer than streetwear and the pattern has to be graded for a body in motion.

Wick and dry. Sweat has to move off the skin and out of the fabric. Polyester and polyester blends do this; heavy cotton does not, which is why a cotton gym tee feels wet and cold within twenty minutes.

Survive the wash. Fitness wear is washed after every use, often hot. Prints crack, seams fail and elastic dies on garments made for fashion cycles.

Look the part. The category is image-led. Colour blocking, tonal logos, oversized pump covers, matching sets. A fitness brand's first order is as much about the photograph as the garment.

The oversized heavyweight tee or pump cover in 270 gsm cotton — the item that photographs best and sells first, decorated with a bold back print or a small tonal chest mark.

The performance tee in poly-spandex — the garment that is actually trained in, tonal logo, sublimated all-over for the second drop.

Leggings and bike shorts in nylon-spandex with a small heat-transferred or silicone logo at the hip or waistband, made to a tested pattern with a high waist and no front seam.

Shorts — a 5-inch or 7-inch inseam in poly with a mesh liner, and a French terry short for lifting.

Joggers and crewnecks in French terry or fleece for the off-gym set, embroidered or puff printed.

Sublimation for all-over designs and any polyester garment — the design becomes part of the fabric, so nothing to crack or trap sweat. DTF for logos on poly and blends, small and placed clear of high-friction areas. Screen print, embroidery and puff for the cotton and French terry pieces.

Not DTG on any polyester or blend — it washes out. Not a large plastisol print on a performance tee — it stops the fabric breathing exactly where it needs to.

Tonal logos — the brand mark in a shade of the garment colour — are the current standard for premium fitness brands and are done by embroidery on fleece, silicone transfer on leggings, and tonal sublimation on poly.

From our current rate sheet at 50 pieces: an oversized 270 gsm tee with a back print around $16.50; a poly-spandex performance tee with a tonal DTF mark around $15; a sublimated training tee around $16; a French terry short with embroidery around $22; leggings in nylon-spandex, cut and sewn to our pattern with a transferred logo, quoted around $22–28. A four-piece launch range at 50 each is roughly $3,800–4,500 in manufacturing.

The calculator prices tees, hoodies and shorts live; leggings, bras and cut-and-sew performance pieces are quoted against the specification because the fabric is sourced for the job.

We manufacture for gym brands, boutique studios, coaches, CrossFit boxes and supplement companies in Pakistan, and for fitness labels in the UK, Australia, Canada and the Gulf — the categories our export data shows growing fastest. Performance fabrics are sourced to the specification; cutting, sewing, sublimation, printing and embroidery are all in our own unit in Lahore.

Minimum 50 pieces per style, 30 per colour, mixed sizes XS to 3XL. Stock-fabric garments 7–10 days; cut-and-sew performance pieces 10–14 working days after sample approval. Size-set samples are available before a first run, and we recommend them for leggings and fitted tees.