Sourcing guide
How MOQ Works for Yoga Leggings
Why the minimum is usually counted per colour rather than per style, and how to test a design without over-ordering.
Published
In this guide
Ask five suppliers for a minimum order quantity and you will get five different numbers, which makes it look arbitrary. It is not. The minimum comes from a specific step in the process, and once you know which step, the number stops being a mystery and starts being something you can plan around.
This guide explains where the floor actually comes from, why it is usually counted per colour rather than per style, and how buyers test a design without over-ordering.
Section 1 of 4
Why the minimum is per colour, not per style
Cutting fabric is cheap to start and cheap to stop. A cutting table can run ten pieces or a thousand, and the cost per piece barely moves. Dyeing is the opposite: a dye house loads a machine with a fixed volume of water and dye, and running it half full costs almost the same as running it full. That fixed bath is the minimum, and it is measured in metres of fabric, not in garments.
This is why a minimum is quoted per colour. One style in one colour is one dye bath. The same style in six colours is six baths, and each one carries its own floor. Buyers who ask for a single minimum for a whole range are usually asking for a number that cannot exist.
There is a second effect worth knowing. Fabric is knitted in a tube or a roll, and a roll has a practical minimum length before the mill will set up the machine. If your order needs less fabric than that, you are not buying a short roll — you are buying a share of a longer one, and the mill decides whether your colour is worth interrupting its schedule for.
Section 2 of 4
What usually sets the floor
Three things push the number in different directions. The fabric minimum sets the smallest amount the mill will run. The dye-lot minimum sets the smallest amount the dye house will dye. Cutting efficiency sets how much fabric a style wastes, because a pattern that nests badly needs more fabric per garment and therefore reaches the fabric minimum sooner.
Stock fabric sidesteps the first two. If the colour already exists and is held on the shelf, there is no mill run and no dye bath, so the floor drops sharply — often to whatever the cutting and sewing line is willing to interrupt itself for. This is why the fastest and smallest first orders are almost always placed in a colour the supplier already holds.
Custom colour is what raises the floor, not the style. A buyer can change the rise, the waistband, the pocket and the print and stay within the same minimum, because none of that touches dyeing. Change the colour and the number moves.
Section 3 of 4
Testing a design without over-ordering
The usual approach is a staged first order. Run the new style in a stock colour and a small quantity to find out whether the fit sells. Once it has sold, place the repeat in a custom colour at the larger minimum, where the extra volume is paying for a colour you already know works.
The second approach is to spread the range across fewer colours. Three colours that sell well beat six that half-sell, and each colour you drop removes a dye bath from the order. Buyers who plan a first range around four or five colours rather than ten usually find the minimum is no longer the constraint.
The third is to accept a smaller range of sizes for the trial. If the size curve is not yet known, a trial in the middle of the range tells you more per unit than a full size run of a style nobody has worn.
Section 4 of 4
Questions worth asking a supplier
Ask what the minimum is per colour, not per order. Ask whether it changes for a stock fabric versus a custom dye. Ask whether the minimum is set by the mill, the dye house or the sewing line, because that tells you which one has room to move. Ask what happens to the price per unit as the quantity rises, so you can see where the curve flattens. And ask what the sample costs and whether it is credited against the order.
A supplier who answers those five questions with a number and a reason is quoting. A supplier who answers with a range and no explanation is guessing, and the number will move once you commit.
In short
The minimum is a dye bath, not a garment count. Ask for it per colour, choose stock fabric for a first run, and keep the colour count of a new range small until the fit has sold.
