The requests are actually sorted by snail-mail address, since many people
order a  shirt for their spouse.  This way we  can put two shirts  in the
same box without doing multiple passes.  Another thing is that, after the
onslaught of initial  orders, we will be dealing with  say 20-30 orders a
week. Finally  there is the  issue of ending  up with shirts  that nobody
orders. For every size/design combination other than say the top 5, there
will  invariably be  a  number of  shirts  that people  just  end up  not
ordering. The  more boxes you  have, the  more unordered shirts  you get.
Admittedly, with free  shirts you can reasonably hope to  find someone to
take the remaining shirts away from you  so you can throw away the boxes,
but when you get into sweat or  golf shirts that you're selling for ~$25,
just 4  unsold shirts x 10  boxes = $1000,  and extreme sizes tend  to be
harder to get rid of. I'm very  familiar with this problem as it provided
me with premium brand  jeans at 10-20% of list price.  I'd buy the winter
ones in  summer and vice  versa, when they  couldn't find people  my size
(the smallest  available) to get  rid of the  inventory. One size  up and
there were just 2-3  left in the entire store, 2 sizes  up and there were
none (out  of a dozen  possible sizes). Every  year they kept  ordering a
surplus of jeans my size which I  kept buying in the off season (it never
occurred to  them to order  less next time). Then  when I turned  18-19 I
grew up to the next size and this didn't work any longer :-(
 
  Eric