Long Sleeve Shirt Sizing and Fit for Team Orders

A long sleeve team order goes wrong less often on the logo and more often on the sizing sheet. Arklavo runs every long sleeve team order across four garment brands, Gildan, Champion, Comfort Colors, and AS Colour, and the fit conversation is different for each one before a single stitch goes down. A size medium ordered from habit, without checking the brand and cut, is the most common reason a team ends up with three shirts that fit and twelve that do not.

This shows up more on long sleeve shirts than t-shirts, since a long sleeve garment adds two more measurements to get wrong: sleeve length and cuff width. A short sleeve shirt that runs small is a minor annoyance. A cuff that stops short of the wrist on a shirt worn all shift is the kind of thing an employee mentions to everyone.

This guide covers how the four brands differ in fit, how men's and women's cuts split, how to plan a team size run, when to size up for heavier fabric, sizing for remote crews, and what to do if a size comes back wrong.

How do Gildan, Champion, Comfort Colors, and AS Colour long sleeve shirts differ in fit?

The four brands split into two fit categories: standard-weight tees that run true to a normal t-shirt size, and heavier-weight tees that can feel more fitted at the same labeled size. Price and decoration options move with the brand too, so fit is only half the decision.

Gildan

Gildan is the entry point, $17.99 printed and $33.99 embroidered, and the lightest of the four brands. It has the widest gender coverage in our catalog, including a women's style offered in a plus-size fit, which makes it a common pick for teams covering a wide range of body types without splitting across brands.

Champion

Champion sits at the top of the price band, $28.99 printed and $48.99 embroidered, and is the brand teams reach for when the shirt itself should carry brand recognition alongside the logo. It is offered in men's and women's cuts, and is the common pick for retail-facing or customer-facing staff.

Comfort Colors

Comfort Colors is the garment-dyed option, $22.99 printed and $38.99 embroidered. Garment-dyeing gives it a heavier, slightly worn-in hand feel compared to Gildan. Teams that want a softer, lived-in look from day one, rather than a shirt that relaxes after several washes, tend to land here. It is available in men's and women's cuts.

AS Colour

AS Colour is the heavyweight option, $30.99 printed and $45.00 embroidered, named heavyweight in the product title for a reason. This is the fabric most likely to sit closer to the body at the same labeled size, so it is the one brand where checking fit preference before ordering across a team matters most.

One practical rule follows: do not mix brands within a single order unless you size each employee individually. A roster ordered entirely in Gildan can usually be sized off t-shirt habits. A roster split between Gildan and AS Colour needs a per-person check, since the same number fits differently in each brand.

What's the difference between men's and women's long sleeve cuts?

Men's and women's long sleeve cuts are built as separate garments, not the same shirt resized. Women's cuts are generally shaped through the waist with a narrower shoulder line, while men's cuts run straighter through the body. Both cuts exist across most of Arklavo's long sleeve brands, so the choice is which silhouette an employee prefers, not which one is available.

The mistake we see most on team orders is treating gender as a proxy for size rather than a proxy for cut. A larger-framed employee is not automatically better served by a men's cut, nor a smaller-framed employee by a women's cut. Let each person choose the silhouette they prefer and size within it.

Arklavo's catalog splits close to evenly across the two cuts, with slightly more men's styles than women's, and one women's Gildan option is offered in a plus-size fit. Confirm your gendered style is stocked in the brand you want before you build the size sheet.

How do you plan a size run for a team order?

Plan a team size run by collecting a size per person before you order, choosing one brand for the whole roster when possible, and padding the middle sizes with a few spares. The goal is one order that fits the team on arrival, not a first order followed by a correction order.

Collect sizes before you order

Send a short size-request form to every employee, and ask for the brand-specific size where possible rather than a generic "small, medium, large" answer. Note in the request when the team has never worn the specific brand, so people know their usual size may not carry over exactly.

Order a size or two of buffer stock

Mediums and larges are the sizes new hires most often need, and the sizes most likely to run short first. Two or three extra shirts in the middle sizes, using the same decoration setup as the main run, cost little and cover a new hire without a second production run.

If your team spans multiple brands, place the order as clearly labeled groups by brand and size, not a flat list of names. This keeps production accurate and makes the packing list easy to check against the roster on arrival.

Should you size up when ordering a heavyweight long sleeve shirt?

Consider sizing up one size on AS Colour's heavyweight tee if an employee normally prefers a looser fit, since heavier fabric sits closer to the body than a lighter tee at the same labeled size. This is not a universal rule; plenty of employees prefer the closer, heavier feel exactly as labeled.

The safest approach is to ask each employee how they like a long sleeve shirt to fit, close or roomy, rather than applying a blanket sizing-up rule across the roster. A blanket rule fixes the fit for people who wanted it looser and breaks it for people who wanted the closer feel on purpose.

If you are unsure which brand suits your team's preference, our heavyweight long sleeve t-shirts guide covers this in more depth, alongside our Gildan versus Comfort Colors comparison for teams choosing between the two lighter-priced options.

How do you handle sizing for remote or hybrid teams?

Handle remote and hybrid sizing the same way as in-office, with a size-request form, but build in extra lead time since there is no sample shirt to hand someone before the order ships. Distance is a logistics problem, not a fit problem, once you plan for it.

If part of the team is local and part remote, order one or two of each option as office samples first and use that feedback to guide the sizing request sent to the remote group. Every order ships on the same timeline regardless of destination, roughly 2 days in production and 2 to 5 business days in transit, so staggered fulfillment across a distributed team needs no separate shipping process.

What happens if a size is wrong after the order ships?

A wrong size after decoration is not a lost order, since the same logo file can be reprinted or re-embroidered onto the correct size and shipped as a small follow-up order. The setup work, the digitized logo or the print file, is already done, so a correction order moves faster than the original.

Flag the wrong-size garment as soon as it is noticed rather than batching corrections together, since a single-shirt correction can go into production on its own. Keep the sizing sheet from the original order on file so a reorder matches the exact brand, decoration, and logo placement.

For teams with ongoing turnover, browse the full custom long sleeve shirts collection and keep the brand and size notes on file for the next hire. Pair the shirts with matching pieces from custom t-shirts for warm-weather uniforms on the same sizing reference.

Our custom long sleeve shirts buyer's guide covers the full ordering process for a first long sleeve run, and custom embroidery apparel is worth a look if your team is standardizing decoration across garment types.

Frequently asked questions

Size runs go wrong in predictable ways, and these questions are how buyers usually catch it early. Direct answers follow, no hedging.