One school of thought is that if you have the means to offer it, you should offer every colour you can.
Personally I vehemently disagree, and I have three main reasons for doing so.
1) Choice paralysis. Too much choice for a customer is a bad thing. They need enough choices to feel their options are covered, but not so many they freeze up and can't decide which one they prefer. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing - it can result in a lost sale ("I can't decide now, I'll decide later" - and they never come back).
2) Colour is the designer's job. It reflects well on the designer if they pick good colourways, and poorly on them if they do not. To me, choosing not to choose is the same as making a poor choice.
3) The end result reflects on your company. This is related to point two. If you allow the customer to choose any colour combination, and they choose a garish one, they are now wearing that shirt around town representing your company in it.
Choice paralysis is the most important, and the one that the most of us can agree on. Personally, number two is very important to me. Number three is a significantly less important aspect of number two, but for me it would still matter - I don't want a crappy product out there that I didn't endorse with my name on it.
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Originally Posted by neenaw |  | | | | | | | | | So what do you think is a "good" number of colours to offer? | |  | |  | |
One, two, or three at any given time. Four if it's split between genders, but you need to be very careful about that. For example when Threadless used to offer alternative colourways, a practice I'm generally a fan of as it helps create exclusivity, it was not unusual for me to think the women's colourway was well thought out, and the men's was ugly by comparison. If you're going to show someone something they can't have, you'd better have a cool alternative for them too.
Anyway, I say "at any given time" because I don't think there's anything wrong with phasing out colourways, and bringing in others.
How many colours of shirt to offer? 
I kept thinking "but someone might want that colour...". But seriously, a drop down list of 24 colour options looks a bit ridiculous. So I'm trying to compromise between offering colour choice and and offering too much colour choice. 
