Selling t-shirts on Amazon is one of the most accessible ways to start an apparel business in the UK — but it's also one of the easiest categories to get wrong, because Amazon offers three genuinely different routes to market and most guides don't explain which one actually suits a small or first-time seller.
This guide covers all three routes, current UK fees, and the print-quality decisions that separate sellers who build a repeat-order business from sellers who get buried by returns.
The three ways to sell t-shirts on Amazon
1. Merch on Demand (Amazon's own print-on-demand programme). You upload a design, Amazon prints and ships on your behalf, and you never touch stock. Lowest barrier to entry, but you're tier-gated (new accounts start with limited monthly upload/sales caps), margins are the thinnest of the three routes, and you have no control over print quality or garment blank.
2. Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) with your own stock. You design, source blanks, print (in-house, via screen printing, or via DTF), and ship inventory to an Amazon warehouse. Amazon handles storage, packing, delivery, and returns. Higher control over quality and margin, but you're carrying stock risk and storage fees.
3. Fulfilment by Merchant (FBM). Same as FBA but you pack and ship every order yourself. Full control, no storage fees, but you lose the Prime badge in most cases and take on fulfilment workload directly.
For most sellers starting out, FBA with your own printed stock is the strongest middle ground — Merch on Demand's design-only model caps your margin and quality control, while FBM's manual fulfilment doesn't scale well past a handful of orders a day.
What it actually costs to sell a t-shirt on Amazon UK
Amazon's clothing referral fee structure changed for 2026: the rate is now 5% on clothing and accessories items priced at or under £15, and 10% on items priced between £15 and £20, before reverting to the standard clothing rate above that threshold. On top of the referral fee, FBA sellers pay fulfilment fees (picking, packing, delivery) and monthly storage fees, both of which vary by product size and season.
A rough worked example for a £14.99 t-shirt sold via FBA:
- Referral fee (5% at this price band): ~£0.75
- FBA fulfilment fee (standard-size garment): typically £2.50–£3.50 depending on weight and season
- Monthly storage: a few pence per unit in standard months, rising sharply in Q4
That leaves a print/blank/packaging cost budget of roughly £8–10 to hit a reasonable margin — which is exactly where your print method choice matters most.
Why print method decides your margin
This is the part most Amazon seller guides skip, because they're written by generalists rather than printers. Three viable methods exist for small-to-mid volume apparel sellers:
- Screen printing — cheapest per unit at high volume (500+ of one design), but expensive setup costs make it uneconomical for testing multiple designs.
- DTG (direct-to-garment) — good for one-offs and small runs, but slower per-unit and higher cost at volume.
- DTF (direct-to-film) transfers — the format most Amazon apparel sellers underuse. You order printed transfer sheets, press them onto blanks yourself (or have them pressed), with no per-design setup cost and full-colour printing on any garment colour. This is the sweet spot for testing multiple designs at FBA-viable volumes before committing to bulk screen printing on your winners.
If you're testing 5–10 designs to find out which ones actually sell before committing stock budget to your top performers, DTF transfers let you do that without the setup-cost penalty screen printing carries at low volume.
Common mistakes that sink new t-shirt sellers
- Under-pricing to compete on Merch on Demand economics while carrying FBA stock and fulfilment costs — the two models have completely different cost structures; price for the route you're actually using.
- Skipping garment quality checks — returns and negative reviews from thin, poorly-printed shirts do more damage than a slightly higher per-unit cost avoids.
- Not accounting for Q4 storage fee increases — Amazon's storage fees rise substantially in the October–December period; factor this into autumn stock decisions.
- Ignoring Amazon's clothing image and sizing requirements — incomplete or non-compliant listings get suppressed or rejected during the ungating/approval process for the clothing category.
Getting started: a practical sequence
- Register as an Amazon UK seller and request approval for the clothing category if required for your account type.
- Validate 5–10 designs cheaply using DTF transfers on a small batch of blanks before committing to bulk stock.
- Track which designs sell, then move your top performers to bulk screen printing or a larger DTF gang-sheet order once volume justifies it.
- Calculate your real margin per design using current referral + fulfilment fee rates before scaling stock.
FabricForge prints DTF transfers and gang sheets in-house in London, shipped UK-wide — a common route for Amazon apparel sellers testing new designs before committing to bulk print runs. Explore DTF gang sheets →
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FAQ
Do I need a trademark to sell t-shirts on Amazon? No, but you do need to avoid using any protected brand names, logos, or copyrighted artwork you don't own the rights to — Amazon actively enforces intellectual property policy in the clothing category.
What's the minimum order to start with DTF transfers? Unlike screen printing, DTF transfers typically have no meaningful minimum order, making them suited to testing individual designs before bulk committing.
Is Merch on Demand better than FBA for t-shirts? It depends on your priority — Merch on Demand has the lowest setup effort but the thinnest margins and least quality control; FBA with your own printed stock gives more control and margin at the cost of carrying inventory.