Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ)

A minimum order quantity (MOQ) is the smallest quantity a factory or mill will accept on an order line — quoted per style, per style-color, sometimes per size within a color, and per fabric color at the mill. Below it the order is refused or carries a surcharge, so the MOQ sets a floor under the depth of every option in the buy.

The levels stack, and each one binds a different decision. A style MOQ counts every color of a style together, so it limits how many styles a buy budget can carry. A style-color MOQ applies to each colorway on its own, so it limits breadth inside a style: three colors at a 300-unit minimum is a 900-unit commitment, whatever the demand for the third color. A fabric MOQ comes from the mill, in metres or yards per color, and it is shared by every style cut from that fabric in that color — so the fabric, not the style, is the unit that has to clear it. A size-level minimum applies inside the run. Behind all of them is the vendor’s setup cost — a marker, a line changeover, a dye lot — which a short run cannot absorb at the quoted unit price.

As an illustration, a jersey in one color carries a 1,000-metre mill minimum, and two styles use it: a tee planned at 400 units at 1.1 metres each and a dress planned at 300 units at 1.5 metres. That is 440 plus 450, or 890 metres — 110 short. Every exit has a different cost. Add 100 tees (110 metres) or 74 dresses (111 metres), and carry the extra depth to markdown if demand does not follow. Bring a third style into the fabric, which is a range decision. Pay the mill’s surcharge on the short run, which is a cost decision. Or drop the color, which gives up breadth. The comparison is arithmetic, and it belongs at line planning, while dropping a color is still a range choice rather than an order-week consolidation.

On a size run the MOQ is a second floor beside the display floor. The minimum buy a run can carry is the minimum presentable quantity per door times the doors, divided by the smallest size percentage; the vendor’s minimum sits alongside it, and the buy has to clear the higher of the two. A style-color planned at 240 units against a 300-unit MOQ is either bought 60 units — 25% — above plan or not bought at all, and spread to the curve those 60 units add depth to every size, the thinly selling tail sizes included. A size-level minimum concentrates the distortion: a 5% size on the 240-unit plan is 12 units, and a 30-unit size minimum raises it to 30, so the curve the buy carries is no longer the curve demand implied. That is why minimums belong in the line plan and the open-to-buy: an option count drawn without them assumes depth the vendor base may not accept.