Onboarding Kit Budget Math: Cost Per Wear

Most kit budgets get set by taking last year's merch line and dividing by headcount. That produces a number without an argument behind it, and when finance asks why the kit is $51.83 instead of $40, "because it's nicer" loses. Cost per wear, meaning what you pay each time the garment leaves the closet, is the argument that holds up. This page builds that model on our real prices and turns it into a template. It's the finance side of the kit, and the team onboarding kit guide covers what goes in the box.

Sticker price is the wrong number.

A kit's sticker price tells you what leaves the account and nothing about what comes back. A thin promo tee and a 220 GSM tee both show up on day one, but only the 220 GSM tee is still showing up in month six. If the goal is a new hire wearing your mark in a customer meeting or on a video call, the metric that tracks the goal is wears, not pieces.

The pricing guide covers what drives per-piece price. Here we take the price as given and ask what it buys over two years.

The cost-per-wear model, piece by piece

Cost per wear is the price divided by the wears over the garment's useful life. The model has three inputs, which are the price at your tier, a wears-per-year estimate per piece, and a two-year horizon. Each price below includes one DTF print on the piece. The wears below are our working assumptions for a kit that fits. They're estimates we haven't measured, and you should swap in your own figures.

Eighty hoodie wears a year works out to about 1.5 a week, or a little over two a week if they all fall in the cooler two-thirds of the year. That's our guess for a hoodie people like. In a warm climate, halve it, and the kit-level number moves less than you'd think.

The tiers lower it further. The same kit at 50 pieces (−12%) is $45.61 and at 150 (−22%) is $40.43, which over 360 wears comes to $0.13 and $0.11.

A $51.83 kit against a $40 promo bundle

Finance will compare against the promo option, so do it for them. Call the promo bundle $40 for a thin tee, a tote, a pen, a notebook and stickers. Only the tee gets worn, and the rest is desk clutter from day one. Assume ten wears before the tee becomes a gym shirt, or 25 to be generous.

Even the pessimistic row is under a fifth of the generous promo row. The kit costs $11.83 more to buy at list and 43 cents more at the 150-piece tier, and the bundle costs about 28 times as much to wear. That sentence, with the table under it, is most of the budget meeting. For why the promo tee stops getting worn, read why your team doesn't wear the merch.

Two ways to order for 60 hires a year

Two rules move the math your way. Thresholds count the whole mixed order rather than each product line, so 17 three-piece kits make 51 pieces and clear 50 at −12% with only 17 hoodies on the order. After the first order your design and sizes stay on file with us, and a reorder needs only the quantity.

A company hiring about 60 people a year has two options:

• Option A, hire-paced. Make the first order 17 kits (51 pieces, −12%, $45.61 for each kit), then reorder per hire or per monthly cohort from the design on file. Budget the year at the first-order kit price as a planning figure: 60 kits at $45.61 come to $2,736.60. Each reorder is quoted on its quantity, and you hold no inventory.
• Option B, front-loaded. Make the first order 50 kits (150 pieces, −22%) at $40.43, then reorder from the file for the last ten. On the same planning figure, a year is 60 kits at $40.43, or $2,425.80. That saves $310.80, and you hold 50 kits in guessed sizes for most of the year.

Option A is the default. Reorders from the file exist so you never guess sizes, and B gives that up to save $310.80 a year. The pricing page has the full tier table, and B makes sense only when hiring is front-loaded, like a January cohort of 40.

The kit as a share of cost-per-hire

The second frame finance understands is proportion. Recruiting already tracks cost-per-hire, which covers agency fees, job boards, interviewer hours and relocation. Set the kit next to that figure and, at a $4,000 cost-per-hire, a $45.61 kit is 1.1%. At $6,000 it's 0.8%. Nobody trims 1% from a recruiting budget by removing the one part of onboarding the hire can hold.

That frame also settles where the money sits. Book the kit as a per-hire recruiting cost that moves with headcount, in place of a merch lump reviewed once a year, and a slow quarter leaves no boxes behind.

A budget template you can paste

Copy the table and swap in your hire count. It assumes Option A, with 60 hires a year, a 17-kit first order, and the first-order kit price as the planning figure for reorders.

Two rows are $0 because those things sit inside the piece price, so when you compare vendors, make them fill in the same rows. The 3% swap line is generous once sizes come in through the share link before you order (see the sizing guide). Shipping is blank because it depends on where hires live, and the remote onboarding kit guide covers home delivery within the US.

Four arguments for finance

In the order they tend to land:

1. Cost per wear is 13 cents for the kit against $4.00 for the bundle. Show the two tables together and let the ratio make the case.
2. Share of cost-per-hire is about one percent of a number that's already approved, which makes the kit a rounding adjustment inside an existing budget.
3. The cost is variable. Reorders from the design on file mean no inventory and no write-offs. Spend tracks hiring month by month, and a freeze zeroes the line on its own.
4. The wears are safe. Every piece carries a remake guarantee, under which a defect reported within 30 days with a photo is remade free. With 330 GSM fleece and a DTF print rated for 50-plus washes, 160 hoodie wears is a fair assumption.

If the objection is "we already have a swag vendor", the vendor comparison sets the all-in prices side by side. If it's "prove people wear it", that's a program question, and the 90-day kit program builds the wear check in from the start. Teams in technology tend to run this exact hoodie-first kit, and the model works the same with a polo-first kit for customer-facing teams.

To start your own kit, enter your email in the Design Studio, upload a logo and describe the team. It designs a collection across all eight products, saves it under your name and gives you a link.

Related reading.

• The Team Onboarding Kit Guide
• The 90-Day New-Hire Kit Program
• Corporate Apparel Pricing Guide

Questions we get.

How much should an onboarding kit budget be per hire?

For a three-piece kit (hoodie, tee, cap) with one print on each piece, budget $40.43 to $51.83 for each hire. That's $51.83 at list, $45.61 once the order passes 50 pieces (−12%) and $40.43 past 150 (−22%). Add about 3% for swaps and replacements, and book it as a per-hire recruiting cost, not a merch lump.

What is cost per wear and how do I calculate it?

Cost per wear is the garment's price divided by the times it gets worn over its useful life. Estimate wears per piece per year, double it for two years, and divide the kit price by the total. A $51.83 kit worn an assumed 360 times over two years comes to about 14 cents a wear.

Is a $51.83 kit cheaper than a $40 swag bundle?

Per wear, yes, by a wide margin. A $40 promo bundle whose thin tee gets ten wears before it becomes a gym shirt works out to $4.00 for each wear. A $51.83 kit at 360 wears is about 14 cents. Even at half the assumed wears, the kit comes in under 30 cents.

Should I order kits in bulk to hit the volume discount?

Only if hiring is front-loaded. Thresholds count the whole mixed first order, so 17 three-piece kits (51 pieces) clear 50, take −12% and ship free. After that your design and size history are on file, each reorder needs only a quantity, and you hold no inventory in guessed sizes.