Bella+Canvas vs Next Level Apparel

Bella+Canvas and Next Level Apparel are two of the most recognized names in blank apparel. Both brands supply soft, retail-quality garments that custom apparel businesses, clothing brands, and print shops rely on for screen printing, embroidery, and everyday wear. 

Bella+Canvas built its reputation on fabric feel and fashion-forward fits, and Next Level Apparel built its reputation on a wide selection of cotton, blended, and performance fabrics across nearly every garment category. Let’s compare the two brands across fabric, fit, materials, color range, pricing, durability, and printing suitability so you can choose the blanks that match your project.

Quick Comparison: Bella+Canvas vs Next Level Apparel

Brand History

How Bella+Canvas Started

Bella+Canvas traces back to 1992, when high school friends Danny Harris and Marco DeGeorge started a screen printing business in a garage outside San Francisco. They launched a women's line called Bella in 1998 and a men's line called Canvas in 2000, then merged the two into Bella+Canvas in 2002. The company built its identity around domestic production, and it still dyes and cuts most of its garments at its headquarters in Los Angeles rather than moving that work overseas. During the early years of the pandemic, Bella+Canvas shifted part of its factory capacity to become one of the largest producers of fabric masks in the country, then returned to blanks once mask demand fell.

That focus on fabric feel over catalog size became the brand's identity, built on a proprietary combed and ring-spun cotton the company branded Airlume. In mid-2026, promotional products distributor SanMar agreed to acquire Bella+Canvas.

How Next Level Apparel Started

Next Level Apparel is the younger of the two companies, founded in 2003 in Gardena, California, by Joe Simsoly. The brand's origin story centers on a specific technical problem: customers wanted a T-shirt light enough and smooth enough on the surface to sublimate well, so the company developed a 65% polyester, 35% combed ring-spun cotton fabric to solve it. 

From that single fabric, Next Level expanded into 100% cotton, tri-blend, French terry, and performance blends, positioning itself as a volume supplier with a wide catalog rather than a single hero fabric. Private equity firm Blue Point Capital Partners acquired and recapitalized the company in 2018. Next Level is now run by CEO Brett Bjorkman and has joined the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol, an industry program for verified, traceable cotton sourcing. That difference in origin still shows up in how each brand builds its catalog today. Bella+Canvas is optimized for fabric feel first. Next Level was optimized for solving a specific printing problem, then scaled that mindset across a much wider product range.

Brand Philosophy and Positioning

Bella+Canvas: Fewer Styles, Deeper Color and Fabric Feel

Bella+Canvas puts a strong emphasis on fashion-forward basics, soft fabrics, and retail-style fits. Its range includes tees, tanks, fleece, loungewear, and other apparel categories, with more than 300 colors across its assortment. That depth makes the brand a strong option for boutiques, clothing labels, and custom apparel businesses that need fashion colors and a consistent retail look.

A good example is the Bella+Canvas 3001 Unisex Jersey Short Sleeve Tee, a widely used blank tee that reflects the brand's focus on lightweight fabric, a retail-style fit, and a smooth surface for decoration.

Next Level Apparel: Broader Categories, Purpose-Built Fabrics

Next Level Apparel takes a broader approach to fabrics, fits, and garment types. Its catalog includes cotton tees, blended fabrics, fleece, activewear, youth styles, and other options for different decoration and wear requirements. This gives print shops, clothing brands, teams, and other bulk buyers more flexibility when they need several types of garments from the same brand.

The Next Level 3600 Unisex Cotton T-Shirt is a useful example of the brand’s core T-shirt offering and gives buyers a practical example of its cotton T-shirt range.

Manufacturing and Sustainability

Both companies market sustainability as part of the brand, but they emphasize different parts of the supply chain. Bella+Canvas points to its Los Angeles facility, where it says garments are designed, dyed, and cut with close to zero fabric waste, and where dye machines are built to use far less water than a typical clothing manufacturer needs. Part of its warehouse operation runs on solar power, and the company has reduced paper use across its distribution process.

Next Level has taken a different route. It joined the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol to verify that its cotton sourcing meets tracked environmental and labor standards, and it works with WRAP-certified factories that audit for ethical labor practices, including bans on sweatshop and child labor. The company has also moved toward domestic and nearshore production, partnering with textile manufacturers to shift more of its cotton sourcing to U.S.-grown fiber. Neither approach is objectively greener than the other, since the two companies are verifying different parts of the pipeline: Bella+Canvas focuses on its own factory footprint, while Next Level focuses on verified sourcing and factory labor audits.

Fabric Approach

Bella+Canvas built its reputation around one signature fabric story: Airlume combed and ring-spun cotton, spun at 32 singles for a finer, smoother yarn. That fabric anchors the brand's tee, tank, and fleece lines, and the company's marketing leans hard on softness and hand feel as the differentiator. 

Next Level runs the opposite strategy, engineering different fabric blends for different jobs rather than promoting one hero fiber: a poly-cotton blend built for sublimation, a tri-blend built for a vintage drape, a heavyweight cotton for structure, and performance blends built for activewear.

Fit and Sizing:

Bella+Canvas leans toward modern, retail-inspired fits across its range, generally cleaner and less boxy than traditional promotional blanks, which is part of why the brand reads as closer to retail clothing than a standard wholesale blank. Next Level covers a wider range of fit types across its catalog, from relaxed and oversized to fitted and athletic, and extends that range further into tall and youth sizing than Bella+Canvas typically does.

• Bella+Canvas: narrower fit range, consistently modern and fashion-oriented across styles
• Next Level: wider fit range, plus deeper tall and youth size coverage

Always check size charts at the individual style level; fit philosophy differs by brand, but exact measurements still vary style to style within each catalog

Color Range and Availability

This is one of the widest gaps between the two brands. Bella+Canvas's wholesale assortment spans more than 300 colorways once every style and finish is counted, including tie-dye, heather prism, and other fashion-forward options that Next Level generally doesn't stock. Next Level's core colorways run past 60 across its catalog, a solid working range but without the same fashion-color depth. For a brand launch that depends on a specific, less common shade, that gap alone can settle the decision before price ever comes up.

Price and Order Value

Next Level typically prices its comparable styles a few cents to around a dollar below Bella+Canvas per unit at wholesale, though exact pricing shifts by style, color, and supplier. On a run of a few hundred pieces, that gap adds up to a meaningful line item; on a small run, it rarely changes the decision. For teams comparing per-unit cost across a full order, run the numbers through bulk apparel pricing rather than a single-item price shown on a spec sheet, since volume discounts and mixed-style orders change the math.

Durability

Neither brand can be called universally more durable, since both sell garments across a range of fabric weights and constructions.

As a general pattern, Next Level's broader heavyweight and performance lines give buyers more options built specifically for frequent washing and heavy wear, such as uniforms or workwear-adjacent pieces. 

Bella+Canvas's lighter, retail-style fabrics hold their shape well but are built more for everyday fashion wear than for the heaviest-use applications. 

Which Brand Prints Better

Both brands support screen printing, DTG, embroidery, and heat transfer well, since both build their core fabrics around a tight, combed-cotton weave that gives ink a smooth, even surface. 

• Bella+Canvas's lighter, more consistent fabric across its core line tends to favor fine-detail DTG work.
• Next Level's wider range of fabric weights gives decorators more room to match a heavier, more opaque base to jobs that need it, particularly dark-color screen printing.

Which Brand to Choose, by Buyer

• Clothing brands and boutiques: Bella+Canvas, for the color depth and consistent retail-style fabric feel
  
• Businesses needing more Variety: Next Level, for the wider catalog across fleece, activewear, and sizing.
  
• Print shops running mixed jobs: stock both, since customer requests are split across both brands' strengths
  
• Budget-first bulk orders: Next Level, since the price gap compounds fastest at scale

Final Verdict

Neither brand is objectively better across every category. Bella+Canvas is the better fit for buyers who put fabric feel, color depth, and a consistent retail-style look first. Next Level Apparel is the better fit for buyers who value a wider catalog, more fit and sizing options, and lower per-unit cost at volume. The right choice depends on what you need the brand relationship to cover, not just which single shirt feels softer. For sourcing either brand at scale, browse custom shirts for business or the full Next Level Apparel Collection to compare current stock and pricing before placing an order.