The single term that determines whether a first-time brand can actually afford to launch a design — explained plainly.
A real bulk order at 20 pieces per style — sized, bagged and ready to ship.
It's the smallest number of units a manufacturer will produce in one run of a single design. Quote a factory for less than their MOQ and one of two things happens: they turn the order down, or they quote you a much higher per-unit price to make it worth their setup cost.
Cutting fabric, setting up a print or sublimation run, and threading a production line all cost roughly the same whether you order 10 units or 500. Below a certain quantity, the setup cost per unit becomes too high for the factory to produce profitably — so they set a floor.
Across the sportswear manufacturers we've compared ourselves against, bulk MOQs typically cluster between 40 and 100 pieces per style. Our own bulk MOQ is 20 pieces — deliberately set low, because a lot of the brands we work with are placing their first-ever order and can't commit to 100 units on a design they haven't sold yet.
Don't confuse a bulk MOQ with a sample. A sample is a single unit (or small handful) produced to confirm fit and fabric before you commit to the bulk quantity — most manufacturers worth working with, including us, don't apply an MOQ to samples at all.
