MOQ and Unit Cost Economics: Why 300 Pieces Costs Less Per Shirt Than 30

“Why is your minimum 50 pieces?” is a fair question and it deserves a real answer rather than a policy. Minimum order quantities are not a way of filtering out small customers. They are the visible edge of an arithmetic problem, and once you can see the arithmetic you can work with it — often getting a better price without ordering a single extra piece.

What an MOQ really is

Producing a printed garment involves two categories of cost:

• Variable costs — incurred once per piece. The blank garment, the ink used, the labour to print and fold it, the poly bag.
• Fixed costs — incurred once per design, regardless of whether you make one piece or ten thousand. Screens, films, digitising, colour matching, machine setup, first-article inspection.

The unit cost of an order is:

unit cost = variable cost + (total fixed cost ÷ quantity)

That division is the whole story. At quantity 10, the fixed cost is divided by 10 and dominates everything. At quantity 1,000 it has effectively vanished. A minimum order quantity is simply the point below which the second term becomes so large that the price stops looking like a garment price and starts looking like an insult.

A factory quoting you an MOQ is not refusing your order. It is telling you where its cost curve stops being flat.

The five fixed costs behind every order

1. Screen and film preparation

For screen printing, each colour in each design needs its own screen: film output, emulsion coating, exposure, washout, drying, taping and registration on the press. That is real labour and real consumable cost, and it happens once whether you print 20 shirts or 2,000.

2. Machine setup and registration

Setting up a multi-colour press means aligning each screen so the colours land on top of each other within a fraction of a millimetre, then pulling test prints until the deposit and cure are right. Those test prints are scrapped garments — a genuine cost that has to be recovered somewhere.

3. Digitising and stitch-outs

Embroidery does not use your artwork. It uses a stitch file, created by a digitiser who decides the direction, density and sequence of every stitch. That file costs money to create and it is created once. Then a stitch-out is sewn on the actual fabric to check for puckering.

4. Colour matching

Hitting a specific Pantone means mixing ink, printing a draw-down, reading it, adjusting and repeating. On a well-known colour that is twenty minutes. On a difficult one — bright oranges and certain greens are notorious — it can be an afternoon.

5. Sampling and first-article inspection

The pre-production sample and the inspection of the first pieces off the line are fixed costs of doing the job properly. We do not skip them, so they have to be paid for.

A worked example: 30 vs 300 shirts

Take a two-colour front print on a 180 GSM cotton t-shirt. Assume, purely for illustration:

• Blank garment: ₹210 per piece
• Print labour and ink: ₹18 per piece
• Packing and handling: ₹12 per piece
• Screen setup: ₹1,300 per colour → ₹2,600 for two colours
• Sampling and first-article: ₹1,200 one-off

*At 1,000 pieces the blank itself gets cheaper, because we buy a full fabric lot rather than drawing from stock. That is the second effect: above a certain volume, the variable cost drops too.

Notice the shape of the curve. The saving from 30 to 100 pieces is dramatic. From 300 to 1,000 it is modest. Most of the benefit of ordering more is captured well before you reach the quantities founders imagine they need. If you are choosing between 250 and 800 pieces, the unit-cost argument for 800 is much weaker than it feels — and the cash tied up in unsold stock is very real.

MOQ by print method

Note that screen printing's MOQ is per colourway, not per order. Fifty shirts in one design is one setup. Fifty shirts split across five designs is five setups, and the price will reflect that. This surprises people constantly.

Why fabric has its own minimum

Print setup is not the only fixed cost. Fabric carries its own, and it is larger.

Dyeing happens in a bath, and a bath has a minimum efficient load — typically a few hundred kilograms. Below that the cost per kilogram climbs steeply and, more importantly, colour consistency suffers. That is why a custom Pantone-matched fabric colour has a minimum measured in hundreds of kilos, which for a t-shirt weight is well over a thousand garments.

The practical consequence for a new brand: launch on stock colours. We hold a standing range of dyed fabric, and drawing from it removes the dye minimum entirely. Develop your custom colour for the second or third production run, when the volume justifies it.

The costs that appear after the quote

A quotation that looks cheaper than everyone else's usually is not. These are the lines that get left out:

• Setup and screen charges quoted separately from the unit price.
• Digitising fees for embroidery, sometimes charged per 1,000 stitches.
• Second print location — a back or sleeve print is a whole additional setup and print pass.
• Size upcharges — 2XL and above genuinely use more fabric; a supplier not charging for it has built the cost into every size.
• Individual poly bagging and size stickering — labour that is invisible until it is quoted.
• Freight — apparel is bulky. Hoodies especially. Always ask for delivered pricing to your actual pin code.
• GST — check whether the number you were given is inclusive or exclusive.
• Sample cost — and whether it is credited against bulk if you proceed.

Ask for one number: landed cost per delivered, packed piece, inclusive of tax. It makes quotations comparable and it makes evasive suppliers obvious.

Seven ways to genuinely lower your unit cost

1. Reduce the colour count. Going from four screen colours to two removes two setups and two press passes. Most logos survive the simplification and some improve.
2. Consolidate designs. Three designs × 100 pieces costs meaningfully more than one design × 300. If the designs are for the same audience, ask whether you need all three.
3. Standardise the base garment. One fabric and one fit across your range means one fabric lot, one pattern set, one sampling round.
4. Print one location. A front print and a back print is two setups. A single well-designed front print often sells better anyway.
5. Use stock colours. Removes the dye minimum entirely.
6. Give a realistic lead time. Rush orders consume premium slots and overtime. Two extra weeks of notice is worth a discount, and we will give it.
7. Commit to a schedule, not just a quantity. A client who commits to 200 pieces per quarter gets better pricing than one who orders 200 once, because we can plan fabric and press time around it.

When ordering more is the wrong answer

Quantity is not free money. Every additional piece is cash converted into inventory, and inventory has costs that do not appear in a unit-price table:

• Working capital. Money in stock is money not in marketing, and marketing is what turns stock into revenue.
• Obsolescence. Dated graphics, changed sponsors, a rebrand, a season that ended. Apparel goes stale.
• Size skew. You will sell out of L and M and still be holding XXL a year later. The unsold tail is the real cost of over-ordering.
• Storage and handling. Six hundred hoodies occupy a lot of physical space.

A useful test: if the extra pieces do not lower your unit cost by at least 10%, and you are not confident of selling them within two quarters, do not order them. Order less and re-order — especially with digital print methods, where re-ordering costs nothing extra in setup.

How to read a quotation like a buyer

Five questions that separate a real quotation from a hopeful one:

1. “Is this landed, packed and inclusive of GST?”
2. “What are the setup charges, itemised, and are they one-off or per re-order?”
3. “What is the exact fabric specification — fibre, yarn, knit, GSM and finish?”
4. “What is the lead time from advance payment and approved artwork, in working days?”
5. “What happens if a lot fails inspection — who pays, and how long does the remake take?”

A supplier who answers all five without hesitation has run the job before. One who does not has quoted a number, not a plan.

Try the numbers yourself

Our instant quote calculator implements exactly the model described here: fixed setup by method and colour count, variable cost by product, tier discounts by quantity, and setup waived above 500 pieces. Drag the quantity slider and watch the per-piece figure fall, then switch print method and watch the shape of the curve change entirely.

If you would rather have a real number than a model, send the artwork and the quantity. You will get an itemised quotation, landed and inclusive, within one working day.