Best Hoodies for Custom Branding in Australia

TLDR: GSM is the decision, not the detail. Pick the weight that matches the job first, then the style, and the rest of the order gets easy.

Every "best hoodies" list in Australia is written for someone buying one hoodie for themselves. This one is for the person ordering fifty with a logo on them. Every hoodie below is in our hoodies range, with its real weight, fabric, fit and price at both ends of the quantity scale.

Start with GSM, because it decides everything else

GSM is grams per square metre: the weight of the fabric, not the garment. It is the most useful number on a spec sheet because it predicts how the hoodie feels, how it photographs, what it costs to freight, and how well it takes a logo.

258 to 290 GSM is the everyday range. Light enough to wear indoors and through a Brisbane or Perth winter, cheap enough to give to a whole team, and thin enough that fine embroidery sits cleanly. The default for staff rollouts and event merchandise.

320 to 350 GSM is the upgrade. Noticeably more substantial in the hand, holds shape through more washes, and reads as a garment someone chose rather than one they were given. This is the range for merch you want people to actually wear.

400 to 500 GSM is heavyweight. It reads premium on sight, suits a Melbourne or Canberra winter, and works for a limited drop or a long-service gift. Two trade-offs: freight costs more because the garments are bulkier, and dense brushed fleece is harder to embroider finely.

One caution. Higher GSM is not the same as better quality. A well-made 290 GSM hoodie in combed cotton will outlast a poorly made 400. Weight tells you the feel and the use case, not the construction.

Midweight hoodies, 258 to 320 GSM

AS Colour Supply Hood 5101, 290 GSM - $44.55 each at 25, down to $39.55 at 1,000

The default choice for most branded hoodie orders in Australia, and the one to beat. 80% cotton with 20% polyester anti-pill CVC fleece, regular fit, raglan sleeves, lined hood with a tonal drawcord, kangaroo pocket, pre-shrunk. Sixteen colours, the widest colour run here.

The cotton-faced fleece is why it prints well: the smooth cotton surface takes ink cleanly where a polyester face would fight it. Available with one-colour print, full-colour print, large-format print or embroidery.

American Apparel ReFlex RF498, 258 GSM - $39 each at 25, down to $31 at 500

The lightest and the most retail-looking. 70% combed ring-spun cotton, 20% recycled polyester and 10% polyester, relaxed boxy fit with side seams, drawcord-free unlined hood. Twelve colours.

Ring-spun cotton is smoother and denser than standard carded cotton, giving a finer surface for detailed printing. The drawcord-free hood also means nothing sits over your chest print in photographs.

TRENDSWEAR Fairmount, 280 GSM - $50.96 each at 10, down to $32.20 at 500

The only contrast-panel style here, and the cheapest at volume. 80% combed cotton with 20% polyester brushed fleece, ribbed cuffs and hem, lined hood, kangaroo pocket, OEKO-TEX Standard 100 certified. Regular unisex fit in Australasian sizing, XS to 4XL, in heather grey, olive and navy.

The contrasting centre panel gives you a natural branding field, useful when a logo would otherwise float on a plain chest. Note the steep quantity curve on this one, covered below.

AS Colour Relax Hood 5161, 320 GSM - $49.32 each at 25, down to $44.32 at 1,000

The relaxed-fit step up. 80% cotton with 20% recycled polyester CVC fleece, drop shoulders, self-fabric lined hood with no drawcord, kangaroo pocket, pre-shrunk. Fourteen colours.

Drop shoulders change where your logo sits. A chest print centred on a regular-fit hoodie can look low and off-centre on a drop-shoulder body, so the print position needs setting for this cut specifically rather than carried over from another style.

Heavyweight hoodies, 350 to 500 GSM

AS Colour Stencil Hood 5102, 350 GSM - $49.32 each at 25, down to $44.32 at 1,000

The best balance of weight and price in the range, and the one we recommend most often when a midweight feels too thin. 80% cotton with 20% recycled polyester anti-pill CVC fleece, regular fit, inset sleeves, lined hood with a tonal shoestring drawcord, pre-shrunk. Fifteen colours. It costs exactly the same as the 320 GSM Relax Hood, which makes it hard to argue against if you want a regular fit.

AS Colour Heavy Hood 5146, 400 GSM - $52.73 each at 25, down to $47.73 at 1,000

80% cotton with 20% recycled polyester CVC fleece, oversized fit with dropped shoulders, self-fabric lined hood with drawcord, 2x2 ribbing at cuffs and hem, pre-shrunk. Nine colours.

This is the weight most people mean when they say they want a hoodie that feels expensive. The oversized cut is deliberate and current, but your size run will skew: people order down in this style more often than they order up.

AS Colour Made Hood 5151, 500 GSM - $58.86 each at 25, down to $53.86 at 1,000

The flagship. 100% cotton French terry with a loop back, relaxed fit with dropped shoulders, self-fabric lined hood, no drawcord for a clean finish, 2x2 ribbing, pre-shrunk. Four colours.

French terry is a different construction from brushed fleece: looped on the inside rather than napped, so it is heavy without being fuzzy and it holds a crisp print. At 500 GSM this is a garment people keep. It is also the most expensive to freight, worth factoring in if you are shipping to multiple states.

Zip-through hoodies

AS Colour Relax Zip Hood 5162, 320 GSM - $47.27 each at 25, down to $42.27 at 1,000

80% cotton with 20% recycled polyester CVC fleece, relaxed fit with drop shoulder construction, YKK front zip, self-fabric lined hood with no drawcord, kangaroo pocket. Three colours.

A zip changes your branding options. A full front zip splits the chest, so a centred chest logo no longer works. Move it to the left chest, the back, or the sleeve. This is the most common artwork problem on zip orders and it is easy to avoid if you plan for it.

Swiss Peak Urban zip hoodie, 280 GSM - $67.43 each at 10, down to $42.45 at 500

280 GSM French terry in 60% cotton and 40% polyester with a jersey lining, ribbed knit cuffs, YKK coil zip with an embossed puller and a reflective logo. Regular fit, XS to 4XL with published chest and length measurements. Black only.

The single colourway makes this a straightforward corporate order rather than a merch piece, and the published measurements make it one of the easier styles to size a team on without a sample run.

Performance and specialist hoodies

Sport-Tek PosiCharge Competitor hooded pullover - $38.46 each at 25, down to $29.11 at 1,000

The cheapest at volume and the only true performance fabric here. 100% polyester interlock with moisture-wicking PosiCharge treatment, three-panel hood, set-in sleeves, open cuffs and hem, removable tag. Six colours, XS to 4XL.

One important caveat, and it comes from the manufacturer: 100% polyester performance fabrics need special care through the printing process. The reason is dye migration. Polyester dye can gas out under the heat of a press and tint the ink sitting on top of it, so a white print on a red performance hoodie can turn pink weeks later. It is a solved problem with the right blocking underbase and cure temperature, but it has to be planned for, not discovered.

AS Colour Stencil Safety Hood 5102F, 350 GSM - $49.32 each at 25, down to $44.32 at 1,000

Built for worksites. 65% recycled polyester with 35% cotton anti-pill CVC fleece, regular fit, lined hood, inset sleeves, kangaroo pocket, pre-shrunk. Two colours.

Worth being precise here: this is a high-visibility coloured hoodie. If your site requires compliance with AS/NZS 4602.1, confirm the specification against your site's requirement before ordering, because fluorescent colour alone does not make a garment compliant.

Nike Club Fleece pullover hoodie CJ1611 - $146 each at 10, down to $125 at 500

The recognised-brand option. 80% cotton with 20% polyester brushed-back fleece, 100% cotton jersey hood lining, three-panel hood with dyed-to-match drawcord, rib knit cuffs and hem, front pouch. Eight colours.

You are paying around three times the AS Colour equivalent for the swoosh. Sometimes that is exactly right, for an executive gift, a sales incentive or a golf day, where the recipient recognising the brand is the point. For a staff rollout it rarely is.

Compare the range at a glance

Prices are per unit excluding GST and excluding decoration.

Why the same hoodie costs so much more at ten than at five hundred

Look at the Fairmount in that table: $50.96 each at 10 units, $32.20 at 500. That is a 37% swing on an identical garment, and it catches people out.

The reason is that a production run has fixed costs that do not care how many units you order. Screens have to be made, a machine has to be set up and test-run, and someone has to handle the job end to end. Across ten units that overhead is a large part of what you pay. Across five hundred it disappears into the background.

Two practical consequences. First, the gap between ten and fifty units is usually the steepest part of the curve, so if you are ordering twelve, price fifty before you decide. Second, the cheapest hoodie at low volume is often not the cheapest at high volume. At 25 units the Sport-Tek is the cheapest here and the Fairmount is nearly the dearest. At 500 they have almost swapped places.

Which decoration method suits which hoodie

Most guides list the methods against every garment, which decides nothing. The fabric decides it.

Screen printing is the volume answer on cotton-faced fleece. The cost sits in the setup, one screen per colour, so it gets cheaper per unit the more you order and dearer the more colours you use. It is the wrong choice on a pigment-dyed or heavily brushed surface, and on 100% polyester it needs a blocking underbase to stop dye migration.

Embroidery reads as the most premium finish and is the right call for a left chest logo. It has a floor, though. Fine text and linework below roughly 4mm will not survive being stitched, and on high-pile brushed fleece at 400 or 500 GSM small stitching sinks into the nap and loses definition. On heavyweight fleece, either simplify the logo or use a backing and topping to hold it above the pile. There is also a one-off digitising cost to convert your logo into a stitch file, which is then reusable on every future order.

Full-colour and large-format print handles gradients, photographs and complex marks that screen printing cannot do economically. This is what you want for a front or back graphic rather than a small logo.

Transfer and DTF suit small runs and dark or synthetic fabrics. There is no per-colour screen cost, so the economics work below the point where screen printing makes sense, and it handles polyester performance styles cleanly.

As a rule: cotton face plus high volume plus few colours means screen print. Small logo plus premium feel means embroidery, unless the fleece is very heavy. Complex artwork means full-colour print. Small run or polyester means transfer.

Dye lots, and why your reorder will not match

Nobody writes about this and it causes more complaints than anything else on this list.

Fabric is dyed in batches. Two batches of the same colour from the same mill will sit slightly apart, and the drift is usually invisible on its own but obvious side by side. If you order 60 navy hoodies now and another 40 in six months, the second batch can read subtly different in daylight against the first.

Three things help. Order the full quantity in one run wherever the budget allows, including the spares you know you will need for new starters, because one production run is one dye lot. Where you cannot, ask for the dye lot to be recorded against your order so a reorder can be matched or at least flagged. And favour black, white and marle greys for anything you know you will top up, because drift is far harder to see on those than on a mid-tone navy, olive or red.

The same applies to your logo colour. Ask for a PMS match on the ink rather than a visual approximation, and keep the reference on file.

Sizing, fit and why you should order a sample set

Australian sizing is not standardised. A large in one brand is not a large in another, and the styles above span regular, relaxed, boxy and oversized cuts that fit very differently on the same body.

Three practical points. Size runs vary, and colour availability narrows at the extremes, so confirm before you promise a 4XL in olive. Drop-shoulder and oversized styles wear at least a size larger than their label suggests, and people order down accordingly. And for any order where individuals are being sized rather than a bulk curve, order a sample set first and let people try them on. It costs a little and it eliminates the single most expensive mistake in apparel, which is a box of unwearable sizes.

If you are running a straight size curve without samples, a reasonable starting split for a mixed adult group is roughly 10% S, 25% M, 30% L, 20% XL and 15% across 2XL and above, adjusted for what you know about the group.

Lead times and what actually drives them

Standard production runs 15 days on the AS Colour, American Apparel and Sport-Tek lines, 12 days on the TRENDSWEAR and Swiss Peak styles, and 11 days on the Nike. Rush production is available at 5 days on most lines and 7 on the Sport-Tek.

That clock starts at artwork approval, not at your first email. Before it starts you need usable artwork supplied and signed off, and for embroidery you need digitising done. After it finishes you need freight, with extra transit days for WA, NT and regional addresses. Build in a week either side of the production number and you will not be caught out.

Frequently asked questions

What GSM should I choose for a branded hoodie?

For a staff rollout or event merchandise where cost per head matters, 280 to 290 GSM. For merch people will choose to wear or that you intend to sell, 320 to 350. For a premium drop, a cold climate or a long-service gift, 400 to 500. Bear in mind that heavier fabric costs more to freight and is harder to embroider finely.

What is the difference between French terry and brushed fleece?

French terry is looped on the inside face, brushed fleece is napped into a soft pile. French terry is heavier without feeling fuzzy, holds a crisper print and has a more structured drape. Brushed fleece is warmer and softer against the skin but its pile can swallow fine embroidery.

Can I print on a zip-up hoodie?

Yes, but not across the centre chest, because the zip splits it. Left chest, back and sleeve positions all work. Decide the position before artwork is prepared rather than after.

Do hoodies shrink after washing?

The AS Colour styles above are all pre-shrunk to minimise it, as is the Swiss Peak. Some movement on cotton-rich fabric after the first wash is normal. Cold wash and line dry and it is negligible.

What is the minimum order for custom hoodies?

It varies by style. Pricing on the AS Colour, American Apparel and Sport-Tek styles starts at 25 units, while the TRENDSWEAR, Swiss Peak and Nike styles start at 10. If you need fewer, tell us the number up front and we will point you at the styles that allow it rather than quoting you a quantity you cannot use.

Which hoodie is best for embroidery?

A regular-fit midweight with a smooth cotton face. The AS Colour Supply Hood at 290 GSM and the Stencil Hood at 350 GSM are both reliable. Avoid fine detail on the 400 and 500 GSM styles unless the logo is simple, because the pile works against small stitching.

How long does a custom hoodie order take?

Standard production is 11 to 15 days from artwork approval depending on the style, with rush available at 5 to 7 days on most lines. Add time before that for artwork and any embroidery digitising, and time after it for delivery.

Get a quote on your hoodie order

Tell us the quantity, the weight you are after and whether you want print or embroidery, and we will come back with styles that fit, usually within 30 minutes.

Call 02 8014 3214, browse the hoodies range, or look at zip hoodies and sweatshirts if a pullover is not the right fit.