What is MOQ, and what does a 50-piece minimum actually mean?

A minimum order quantity is the smallest run a factory will produce for one style. It exists because every order carries fixed costs that do not shrink with the quantity — setting up a screen, digitising a logo, matching a dye lot, cutting a marker, threading a line. Spread across 500 pieces those costs vanish into the unit price; spread across five they dominate it.

There is also a physical floor. Fabric is bought by the roll, dye is mixed by the batch, and a cutting table lays out dozens of pieces at once. Below a certain number the factory is doing the same work for a fraction of the output, and the price per piece would have to rise to a level nobody would pay.

So the MOQ is not a way of keeping small buyers out. It is the point at which a made-to-order garment becomes possible at a sensible price. Our minimum is 50 pieces because that is where our fixed costs and a fair unit price meet.

50 pieces per style, mixed sizes. One design on one garment in any size breakdown — 10 small, 20 medium, 15 large, 5 extra-large is one order of 50.

30 pieces per colour. Within a 50-piece order you can split across colours provided each colour reaches 30. So 50 black is fine; 30 black and 20 white is fine; 25 and 25 is not, because a dye or blank batch below 30 is not viable.

Medical scrubs are 100 pieces, because the fabric is bought specifically and the sizes run wider.

Decoration can vary within the 50. Fifty tees with the same print is the simplest. Fifty tees with names on the back — a team order — is still one 50-piece order for DTF or sublimation, where each piece prints from its own file at no extra cost.

The minimum is where the price per piece is highest, and it falls from there — quickly at first, then more slowly. Our pricing works on a margin that eases from the 50-piece minimum toward 1,000 pieces, so a garment that costs $12.70 per piece at 50 might be $10.50 at 200 and $8.60 at 500. The calculator on this site shows the curve for any garment and decoration.

The practical consequence: 100 pieces is not twice the cost of 50. It is usually about 1.7 times, because the fixed costs are already paid. If you are close to a quantity break, ask — we will tell you where it is.

Choose a decoration method with no setup. DTF and DTG have no screens or digitising, so a small order is not carrying setup costs it cannot absorb. We still hold the 50-piece minimum, but at 50 these methods are priced fairly.

Order 50 across sizes rather than 20. A 50-piece run of your best garment costs less than you expect — see the cost-to-start guide — and sells over time. Most brands that ask for 20 pieces end up glad they ordered 50.

Combine with a partner. Two brands, cafés or teams sharing a style with different prints is one 50-piece order for digital methods.

Print-on-demand platforms have no minimum because they print one piece at a time onto a stock blank and charge accordingly — a $25–35 tee for the buyer, from a limited catalogue, with no custom label. Pakistan's larger export factories typically start at 300–1,000 pieces per style. Small custom manufacturers in Pakistan sit between 20 and 100.

Our 50 is at the low end of what a real factory — one that cuts and sews rather than only prints — can hold. It is the minimum at which we can offer private label and cut-and-sew rather than only decoration on stock blanks; a colour of your own is a 300-piece dye lot on top of it.