Bulk Custom Hoodies in Montreal: Coton Ouaté by the Hundred, Bilingual Prints and Fleece for a Quebec Winter

Montreal asks for hoodies under three names. You will hear hoodie in both languages, coton ouaté from francophone Montreal, and kangourou from anyone describing the one with the big front pocket. On a dozen pieces the vocabulary hardly matters. On four hundred, the word in the group chat decides which garment gets counted, sized and priced, so pin it down before anyone collects a single size.

Coton ouaté starts as a fabric. The Grand dictionnaire terminologique of the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) lists it as the Quebec and Canadian term for cotton fleece, a brushed cotton with one fleecy face, and it records the familiar use of the word for the garment made from it: a long-sleeved sport or leisure top in that fleece, formally a chandail en coton ouaté. So a coton ouaté is the whole sweatshirt family. A coton ouaté à capuchon is the one with the hood, and a crewneck is a coton ouaté too.

Kangourou is narrower. The same dictionary defines the chandail kangourou, or simply kangourou, as a fleece sport or leisure top with a hood and a front pocket open on both sides at belly level, named for the animal’s pouch, and notes that the short forms are much more common in Quebec than in European French. For a hooded sweatshirt in general, its preferred terms include chandail à capuchon: hooded, long-sleeved, generally fleece, sometimes open down the front.

Why it matters on a run of hundreds: “two hundred cotons ouatés” in a committee message could mean pullover hoodies, crewnecks or zip-ups, and those are different orders, priced separately. Ask which one the group means, print the answer at the top of the size form, and compare it with the pullover on our hoodie design page.

Start with the associations étudiantes. Faculties and programs at McGill and Concordia downtown, Université de Montréal on the north slope of Mount Royal and UQAM in the Quartier latin have their own student associations, and so do the CEGEPs, Quebec’s public colleges. The classic order is the faculty hoodie: program name across the chest, graduating year on the sleeve, one fleece colour, a few hundred people. One rule comes before the artwork: a university’s name and crest are trademarks the university licenses, so get approval from its brand or licensing office first. Orientation-week tees are a separate order, covered in bulk frosh-week shirts.

Then the game studios. Montreal’s game and tech companies, from Mile End and the rest of the Plateau to downtown, treat the hoodie as the closest thing they have to a uniform: the launch hoodie, the team hoodie, the new-hire kit. Minor hockey and ringuette associations dress players, coaches and the parents in the stands, and their season gets going in September, so the team apparel has to be planned before the rink opens. Construction crews from Laval to the South Shore work through the cold months with a company hoodie under the hi-vis vest, and our construction apparel page covers the rest of that kit.

Two more buyers round out the list. Local clothing brands that have outgrown small drops need three hundred of one hoodie, identical, to sell. And many Quebec high schools order the coton ouaté des finissants for the graduating class, which, true to the word, can be a hoodie or a crewneck; the school spirit wear page is written for the staff and parent committees running it.

Now look at the calendar. Classes resume around the start of September, rosters are set the same month, the first cold mornings arrive in October, and by November companies are planning holiday gifts. Nearly all of these buyers want the same thing in the same window: fleece in hand before the real cold. The order that goes well collects sizes in September, approves the mockup in early October and spends the rest of the fall wearing the hoodies. The one that goes badly starts collecting sizes the week of the first snowfall.

The case for ordering hoodies by the hundred is mostly arithmetic. Large orders get volume pricing. In the online design studio the per-piece price drops at 12, 24, 50 and 100 pieces, and every colour of the same garment in one order counts toward the same price break. Orders in the hundreds are usually screen printed and quoted directly — through the free quote form, by email or by phone — and a large order gets the same free mockup and human designer check as a single shirt.

The arithmetic comes from screen printing: its setup costs the same for 40 hoodies or 400, so across 400 it nearly disappears from the per-piece price. The studio pools counts in the same spirit: 30 black and 30 grey hoodies price as 60, and youth hoodies count with the adult version, so a hockey association’s 40 adult and 20 youth hoodies price as one 60-piece run. What does not pool is different garments. Sixty hoodies and forty crewnecks are a 60 and a 40, and the crewnecks miss the 50-piece break, while one hundred hoodies would have reached the 100-piece break.

The second argument is sameness. A single run uses one blank in one fleece colour, printed from the same screens, with the same ink mix, at the same placement, so the four-hundredth hoodie matches the first. Spot colours can be matched to Pantone references, which matters when the association’s colour is a particular red. Split the order across three months and you risk a later batch of the same blank in a slightly different navy, a print sitting a few millimetres higher, and three rounds of chasing sizes. Reorders are where uniform programs drift.

One big run is not always the answer. No minimum on DTF and DTG — we will print a single shirt. Screen printing starts around 6 pieces and becomes the best value past roughly 24–50 pieces. A dozen staff hoodies, a brand testing three designs before committing, or eight hoodies for January’s new hires are digital jobs, and that is fine. The same arithmetic for tees is laid out in bulk t-shirt printing in Montreal.

In Montreal a hoodie is a working layer. From the first cold mornings in October it is the outer layer, through the deep cold it is the mid-layer under a parka, and in April it is the outer layer again, so it gets worn and washed for most of the school or hockey year. That makes the fabric more important than the colour, and the studio offers two.

50/50 cotton-poly fleece is the default and the classic: a brushed, soft interior that holds warmth, a pouch pocket, and a smooth face that takes screen ink well. The polyester half helps the hoodie keep its shape and resist shrinking through a winter of washing. Under a parka it is the warmer, cosier choice, and the sensible default for a faculty, company or school run.

Polyester performance fleece is for people who move in it. It is smoother, wicks sweat, dries out between periods and holds its colour, which suits a team warming up in a cold arena, a ringuette bench, or a crew that sweats under a work jacket and then stands still in the wind. Its colour list is shorter than the 50/50’s, so check that your colour is on it before you plan around it. Switch fabrics on a hoodie in the studio and the price changes with it; the custom hoodies page covers the full range, including the zip-ups that go through the quote form.

The crewneck is the alternative worth weighing. It is the same 50/50 fleece with no hood and no pocket, and that is the only fabric it comes in. The flat front takes a big print or an embroidered logo cleanly, and it sits better under a winter coat that already has a hood. For staff gifts and office runs it is often the better pick. Our custom sweatshirts page covers crewnecks for groups, and the crewneck sweatshirt guide goes through fleece construction, weight and pilling.

Four approaches cover nearly every bulk hoodie order, and at volume the artwork and the placement usually choose between them before taste does.

At hundreds of pieces, screen printing is the default for a reason: once the screens exist, the press repeats the same print on every hoodie at the lowest per-piece cost of the four. Keep the design to one to three ink colours and it pays you twice, in price and in how the print reads across a rink or a lecture hall. Our guide to screen printing (sérigraphie) in Montreal goes deeper.

Embroidery is the call for a staff or gift hoodie where a stitched left-chest logo looks more finished than ink, and it shrugs off years of washing. It costs more per piece than print and wants a simple mark. Placement on a hoodie has its own rules around the pouch pocket, the hood and the sleeves, which our hoodie print placement guide covers, and the best way to print custom hoodies compares the methods head to head.

DTF has a narrower job in a big run: the variants. If 380 hoodies share one screen-printed design and twenty need a coach’s title or a different crest, those twenty can be printed digitally without new screens. It is also the honest answer when the artwork is a full-colour illustration that would need too many screens to be worth it.

In Montreal the language question comes with every group order, and at volume the way you answer it changes the price. Three patterns work.

One bilingual design. French and English on every hoodie: the French name across the chest and an English line on the back, say, or both stacked in one lockup. Everyone gets the same garment, so it is one set of screens and one size curve, the cheapest way to say it in two languages. Two versions. A French hoodie and an English hoodie. In the studio, two designs of the same garment in one order count together toward the price break, so 150 French and 150 English hoodies price as 300 there. On a quoted screen-print run, though, every separate design is its own screen setup, so the second version adds screens for the part that differs. One language only, French or English, is one design again.

The hidden cost of two versions is not the screens; it is the sizing. Two versions mean two size curves, collected and estimated separately, and the classic failure is a run with spare larges in English and two short in French. If you split, collect each person’s language on the same form as their size, and stop at two versions: three or four on a screen-print run multiply setups and size curves for very little gain. Accents, fonts and setting French copy on a garment are their own subject, covered in custom t-shirt printing in Montreal.

One more check if the hoodies will be sold, or carry a business’s message to the public or to staff. The Charter of the French Language sets rules for the language of commerce, of products and of work in Quebec, and the OQLF administers it. This is not legal advice — check with the OQLF for your case.

Fleece does not size like a tee. People wear a hoodie over a shirt, often over a second layer in January, and many like the relaxed drape of a size up, so a group that wears medium tees will ask for a lot of large hoodies. Expect your hoodie curve to sit higher than your t-shirt curve, and put a real size chart in front of people instead of letting them guess.

In the online studio, hoodies and crewnecks run from S to 3XL, and youth hoodies and youth crewnecks from XS to XL; any size outside those ranges goes through the free quote form. 2XL and larger carry a small per-piece upcharge that rises with each size, because the bigger blanks cost more, so a run with a long 2XL–3XL tail prices a little higher than the same count in mediums. For minor hockey and ringuette associations, youth sizes count with the adult hoodie toward the same price break, and the youth hoodie’s hood has no drawcord.

Collect sizes through a form with a deadline, not a group chat, and add a small spread of spares in M, L and XL for late joiners and wrong guesses. Spares in the same run cost the marginal price of a hoodie; a top-up order later is a new job. Our guide to how many of each size to order at 100, 250, 500 and 1,000 pieces gives starting ratios; lean them a size larger for fleece.

Names are the other sizing-season decision. A class list printed across the back of every hoodie, the kind of back a graduating class might want on its coton ouaté des finissants, is one design, identical on every piece, so it screen prints like any other. A different name or number on each hoodie is personalization: it is available, it adds a per-hoodie surcharge, and the name list has to match the size form line by line. The details are in how to order team names and numbers.

We anchor every apparel price conversation on the tee, because it is the number we can state plainly. A screen-printed t-shirt runs roughly $12–$18 CAD each at 50 pieces and drops under $10 each in the hundreds. Full-colour DTF sits slightly higher per piece with no setup fee. Every quote is free and includes a mockup.

A fleece hoodie costs more than a tee at every quantity, because the blank is a heavier, more complicated garment: more fabric, a lined hood, a pocket, ribbed cuffs and waistband. It falls along the same curve, though. In the studio the per-piece price steps down at 12, 24, 50 and 100 pieces, and 100 is the last break online; a run of three or six hundred is quoted directly, usually as screen printing, on its actual count, colours and locations.

Six things move a bulk hoodie price: the number of ink colours, the number of print locations (each is its own screen), the fabric, embroidery, the share of 2XL and larger, and any per-hoodie names or numbers. If the number comes in too high, cut an ink colour or a print location before you cut the garment. A one-colour front on a good hoodie gets worn all winter; a four-colour print on the wrong hoodie ends up in a drawer.

Payment is by card or Interac e-Transfer, and shipping is quoted for your postal code and shown before you pay. If your organization also has people in Ottawa, the same arithmetic runs through bulk hoodie printing in Ottawa.

First, what we are: a shop in Ottawa, one province over, with no storefront, counter, pickup, showroom or delivery van anywhere in Greater Montreal. Printed and decorated in-house in Ottawa, Ontario. Nothing is drop-shipped from overseas, so there are no cross-border customs holds or surprise duties. If you need a counter to walk up to, we are the wrong shop; our post on hoodie printing near me in Montreal covers what ordering from out of town involves.

Then the boxes travel: shipping Canada-wide, including the Greater Toronto Area and Greater Montreal, typically arriving 1–2 days after the order leaves the shop. The courier picture is the same across Montreal and the island, north to Laval, and across the bridges to Longueuil and Brossard on the South Shore. Shipping is quoted for your postal code and shown before you pay.

Big hoodie orders often have to land in more than one place: a studio with offices downtown and in Laval, an association with teams on both shores. Tell us at quote time — it changes how the run is sorted and boxed, and each address is quoted for shipping. If your organization is spread across all three cities, read one bulk apparel order for Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal. Wherever it goes, ship to an address with someone there to sign and count: a reception desk or the association’s office, not an arena lobby or a site trailer.

Now the calendar. Standard turnaround on clothing is 1–2 weeks. Most apparel orders can rush — 4–5 business days or 1–3 business days, priced at checkout — and every order shows the dates it will be ready before you pay. A run in the hundreds is planned differently: the 1–3 business day tier is limited to smaller runs, so plan a big hoodie order on the standard 1–2 week schedule, and treat rushing it as a conversation, not a checkbox — call 613-666-9292 before counting on it. A run of many hundreds is booked into the shop calendar when the order is confirmed, so confirm your date when you book rather than assuming it.

There are two ways in, and big orders often use both. Customers can design their own product free at yayaprints.ca/mockup-creator — upload a logo, place it on a real garment, add print-quality text, choose colours and sizes, and order online without emailing or phoning anyone. Open the free design studio, put the association or company mark on a hoodie in the real fleece colour, and the price updates as you change the count, up to the 100-piece break.

For a run in the hundreds, send the free quote form with what you know: the garment (pullover hoodie, crewneck or zip-up), the fleece and colour, the print locations and ink colours, how many language versions, a size breakdown or your best estimate, the delivery addresses and the date you need the hoodies in hand. Zip hoodies, jackets and toques are not built in the studio, so they come this way too. We serve customers in English and French. Write in whichever language you prefer.

Either way, the file meets a person. Every order is reviewed by a human designer before it goes to press. A person checks artwork resolution, colour, sizing and placement, and either fixes the file or tells the customer what is wrong — it is not an automated preflight. If all you have is a logo pulled off a website, the designer cleans it up, or our vectorization service redraws it as vector art once, for every run that follows. Every order gets a free digital mockup on the actual product before any payment. Nothing prints until the customer approves it, which on four hundred hoodies is the step that matters most.

Prefer to talk it through? Phone 613-666-YAYA (613-666-9292), WhatsApp the same number at wa.me/16136669292, email order@yayaprints.ca, or order online at yayaprints.ca. Bring the count, the colour and the calendar, and we will help you turn a group chat full of “cotons ouatés” into one clean run.