Wholesale Scrubs: Landed Cost, Margins & Buying Guide (2026)

Wholesale Scrubs: What a Case Actually Costs Before You List It

Last updated: September 2026

Bottom line: a case of wholesale scrubs lands between $4 and $9 per unit depending on brand tier and condition grade, and resellers moving Cherokee Workwear or WonderWink sets on Poshmark and eBay typically clear $14 to $22 per top-and-bottom set — a 60% to 140% markup once shipping and platform fees are backed out. That spread is why scrub inventory keeps showing up in liquidation manifests from surplus uniform distributors and closed medical-supply retailers: healthcare staffing turns over fast, hospitals over-order sizes every open-enrollment cycle, and the excess becomes deadstock someone has to move at a discount.

Buying wholesale scrubs is not the same trade as buying wholesale streetwear. The buyer pool is narrower — working nurses, CNAs, techs, and dental hygienists rather than general fashion shoppers — but it is also stickier.

A nurse who finds a seller stocking her exact size in Figs or Grey's Anatomy scrubs in her preferred color will come back every few months, because scrub sets wear out from daily washing on an industrial cycle in roughly 9 to 12 months of regular shift work.

Where the margin actually comes from

Three things separate a profitable wholesale scrubs lot from a shelf-warmer: brand recognition, size curve, and color/print currency. A 200-unit mixed lot heavy on size XS and 5XL in a discontinued print sells slower than a tighter lot in mid-run sizes (S–XL) in solid navy, black, or ceil blue — the colors most hospital and dental-office dress codes actually permit.

Sellers who sort and photograph by size before listing report meaningfully faster sell-through than those who bulk-list an unsorted case, because a nurse shopping for scrubs online searches her size and brand, not "wholesale scrubs" as a category.

A 40-unit lot of Cherokee Workwear Revolution tops in sizes S-XL, priced at $6 landed, will clear a resale storefront faster than a 40-unit lot of assorted novelty-print scrubs in the same brand at the same price, because print scrubs skew toward pediatric and specialty units — a much smaller buyer pool than general medical-surgical staff.

Freight matters more here than in most apparel categories. Scrub sets are heavier per unit than t-shirts once folded in bulk poly bags, so a pallet quoted at $0.40/lb in landed freight can add $1-$2 per unit to a case that already looked cheap on the manifest sheet. Run that number before committing to a lot, not after it arrives.

The Real Landed Cost of a 100-Unit Wholesale Scrubs Lot

Bottom line: a well-sorted 100-unit wholesale scrubs lot nets roughly $440, or about 38% margin on landed cost, once freight, sorting labor, packaging, and marketplace fees are all counted against the sale price — but that number collapses fast if shrink runs above the 8-12% that is normal for wholesale scrubs bought sight-unseen. The manifest price is never the real price.

Sellers who budget only the case cost and skip freight, labor, and fee lines routinely think they bought a bargain lot of wholesale scrubs at $5.75 a unit when the true landed cost, before a single sale, is closer to $7.55.

Where the table understates cost

Four line items get skipped by first-time buyers of wholesale scrubs and each one erodes the 38% margin shown above. First, shrink: liquidation lots of wholesale scrubs typically arrive with 8% to 15% of units unsellable — missing drawstrings, bleach spotting, or a size that never moves (2XS and 5XL sit longest).

Second, storage time: scrub sets that don't sell within 60 days tie up capital that could turn over in a faster category, and the opportunity cost of that capital rarely makes it into a seller's spreadsheet.

Third, photography and listing time: a nurse buyer wants to see the exact color under real light next to a size chart, which means 3-4 photos per listing rather than the single stock photo that works for a graphic tee.

Fourth, returns: scrub fit runs differently by brand — a Cherokee Workwear medium fits looser than a Figs medium — and mis-fit returns on wholesale scrubs run higher than on basics because buyers are ordering sight-unseen for a garment they wear for 12-hour shifts.

A seller who priced a $575 lot of wholesale scrubs at $16 average without accounting for these four factors can end a quarter thinking they cleared $440 in margin and actually have cleared closer to $250 once a dozen units are marked down to move and two are returned outright.

Rebuilding the cost table every quarter against actual sell-through, rather than the day-one manifest, is the difference between a scrubs sourcing operation that compounds and one that quietly bleeds cash while looking profitable on paper. , according to U.S. wholesale trade data from Census Bureau

Brand tier changes every number in the table

The table above assumes a mixed lot of mid-tier wholesale scrubs — Cherokee Workwear, WonderWink, and Dickies Medical, brands most working nurses already own and trust.

Move to a lot of premium wholesale scrubs from a brand like Figs and every line shifts: base cost per unit typically runs $9-$14 instead of $5.75, but resale price also climbs to $28-$38 for a lightly worn set because the secondhand Figs market on Poshmark is deep and buyers actively search the brand by name.

Move the other direction to unbranded or off-brand wholesale scrubs and the base cost can drop under $3 per unit, but resale price compresses to $9-$11 and sell-through slows, because unbranded scrub sets compete on price alone against buyers who can order a new no-name set from a uniform supplier for not much more.

The margin percentage can look similar across all three tiers on a spreadsheet; the capital required, the sell-through speed, and the total dollars generated per case are not similar at all, and a seller sizing a first purchase should pick a tier based on available cash and patience, not the tier with the highest headline margin.

Quick tangent — I use the Closo Demand Insights to track what is actually moving right now, which saves me about three hours a week of manual search. Worth a peek before your next haul.

Six Places Wholesale Scrubs Margin Disappears Before a Seller Notices

Bottom line: the difference between a wholesale scrubs buyer who nets 35%+ margin and one who barely breaks even almost never comes down to the purchase price — it comes down to five or six operational habits that quietly cost 10-15 percentage points each if skipped. We track the same failure patterns across sellers who source wholesale scrubs from surplus uniform brokers, closeout auctions, and liquidation marketplaces, and the losses cluster in predictable places rather than random bad luck.

The first and largest leak is buying a wholesale scrubs lot off a photo manifest instead of a unit-level count. A broker's listing photo showing 150 folded scrub tops does not tell a buyer how many are size 3XL versus size S, whether the drawstrings are intact, or whether 20 of them are actually scrub jackets miscounted as tops.

A seller who paid $780 for a "150-unit" lot and unboxed 128 sellable units plus 22 damaged or mis-sized pieces effectively paid $6.09 per usable unit instead of the $5.20 the manifest implied — a 17% cost overrun discovered only at unboxing, after the money is gone.

The size-curve trap

The second leak is size mismatch, and it is specific to wholesale scrubs in a way it is not for graphic tees.

Hospital and clinic staff skew toward mid-run sizes (S through XL), but liquidation lots of wholesale scrubs frequently arrive heavy on the sizes that didn't sell at retail — 2XS and 4XL-5XL — because those are exactly the sizes a chain uniform retailer over-orders and later liquidates.

A seller who doesn't check the size breakdown before buying can end up with 30% of a lot in sizes that represent under 8% of realistic buyer demand, meaning nearly a third of the capital in that wholesale scrubs purchase sits on a shelf for 90+ days or gets liquidated a second time at a loss.

The third leak is condition grading done by the buyer, not the seller of the lot.

Grade A/B claims on wholesale scrubs manifests are self-reported by the broker in the large majority of cases we've seen sellers describe, and a seller who takes that grade at face value without photo verification or a small sample order first routinely finds 5-10% of "Grade A" units carry visible staining, missing size tags, or sun-fading that drops them to a $4-$6 clearance price instead of the $16-$18 a clean unit commands.

On a 100-unit lot, that alone is a $1,000+ swing in projected revenue. , according to SBA wholesale business resources

Fourth: platform mismatch. Wholesale scrubs sell differently across marketplaces — Poshmark's search and closet-sharing culture favors branded sets like Cherokee Workwear and moves them at a premium, while a generic listing on a general marketplace with no medical-apparel search traffic can sit for months.

A seller who lists identical inventory only where they're comfortable, rather than where medical-apparel buyers actually search, leaves real revenue on the table; cross-listing the same wholesale scrubs lot to Poshmark, eBay, and Mercari simultaneously routinely cuts average days-to-sell by half compared to single-platform listing, because it multiplies the chance of matching a searching nurse's exact size and color.

Fifth: storage and turnover time get treated as free when they aren't. Wholesale scrubs tie up capital the same way any inventory does, and a lot that takes 120 days to sell through instead of 45 effectively cuts annualized return on that capital by more than half, even if the final margin percentage looks identical on paper.

Sellers who track days-to-sell by size and color, and mark down slow units at day 45 rather than day 120, keep capital cycling into the next wholesale scrubs lot instead of parked on a rack. Sixth, and easiest to miss: return and fit-complaint handling.

Scrub sizing is not standardized across brands the way it is for basics — a Dickies Medium runs differently than a Cherokee Medium — and a seller who doesn't disclose brand-specific fit notes in the listing eats a higher return rate, typically 8-12% on wholesale scrubs versus 3-5% on plain tees, purely from avoidable fit mismatches.

7-Step Checklist Before You Wire Money for Wholesale Scrubs

1. Request an itemized manifest, not a photo. A legitimate wholesale scrubs supplier can produce a spreadsheet with unit count, size breakdown, brand, and condition grade per SKU — if a seller only offers a stock photo of a pallet, treat the count as unverified and price your offer accordingly.
2. Confirm the size curve before you agree to a price. Ask specifically what percentage of the lot falls in S-XL versus 2XS/4XL-5XL; a wholesale scrubs lot that is more than 25% extreme sizes should be priced $1-$2 per unit lower than a mid-run-heavy lot of the same brand.
3. Order a 10-20 unit sample before committing to a full pallet, especially from a new supplier. A $60-$120 sample order that reveals fabric fading or fake Cherokee Workwear tags saves a $2,000+ mistake on the full lot.
4. Verify the supplier's return or dispute policy in writing before payment clears. A supplier unwilling to put a 48-hour inspection window in writing is a signal to walk, no matter how attractive the per-unit price on the wholesale scrubs lot looks.
5. Pay through a traceable method — company check, ACH, or an escrow-style marketplace transaction — never a personal wire or cash app to an individual seller, regardless of how established the wholesale scrubs listing appears.
6. Calculate landed cost per unit including freight before comparing offers. A $5.00/unit lot with $2.00 freight is more expensive than a $6.00/unit lot with $0.50 freight, and comparing headline prices alone on wholesale scrubs listings routinely leads buyers to the worse deal.
7. Sort and photograph by size and color within 48 hours of arrival. The faster a wholesale scrubs lot goes from pallet to organized, photographed inventory, the faster capital starts cycling back through sales instead of sitting shrink-wrapped in a garage.

Red flags that should stop a purchase outright

Two signals matter more than any single line item: a supplier who refuses a sample order on a lot over $500, and pricing that sits far below the market range covered earlier in this guide — under $2 per unit on a claimed Grade A wholesale scrubs lot is a near-certain sign of counterfeit tags, heavy damage, or a manifest that won't match what arrives.

Run the Numbers Before You Buy Your Next Wholesale Scrubs Lot

Bottom line: the sellers who turn wholesale scrubs into a repeatable income stream are the ones who run the landed-cost math on every lot before wiring money, not after unboxing it — a habit that turns a 38% margin lot into a scaled category and a skipped-math lot into a $2,000 lesson. Everything in this guide — the $11.60 all-in landed cost on a 100-unit case, the 8-15% shrink range, the size-curve trap that eats a third of a lot's resale value — points to the same conclusion: wholesale scrubs reward sellers who treat sourcing as a spreadsheet exercise first and a shopping exercise second.

Once a wholesale scrubs lot is priced, sorted, and photographed correctly, the remaining work is distribution — getting each set in front of the specific buyer searching for that size and brand across Poshmark, eBay, Mercari, and Facebook resale groups without re-listing every item by hand on every platform.

Sellers scaling past a single pallet a month typically reach for crosslisting tools like Closo at exactly this point, since keeping inventory counts synced across four marketplaces manually is where most of the time savings from good sourcing gets given back.

For sourcing itself, Closo Wholesale lists liquidation lots by category so a seller can compare a scrubs lot's price and manifest against other apparel categories before committing capital.

Before your next purchase

Rebuild the cost table from Section 2 with the actual quote in front of you — swap in the real per-unit price, the real freight quote, and the real fee structure for the marketplace you plan to sell on, and only proceed if the projected margin clears at least 25-30% after shrink.

A lot that only pencils out at 38% margin under ideal assumptions rarely survives contact with an 8-12% shrink rate and a slow month.