What Is MOQ?

MOQ stands for Minimum Order Quantity. It is the smallest number of units a factory will produce per style, per color, or per fabric setup. MOQ is the single biggest reason emerging apparel brands struggle to get a quote.

Why MOQs exist

A factory's costs are mostly fixed per run. Setup time on a knitting machine, dye lot minimums for color matching, marker-and-cut planning, sample-room engineering, and pattern grading all consume the same labor whether you produce 500 units or 50,000. A factory at 500 units loses money. At 5,000 units, the factory breaks even. At 50,000 units, the factory profits and quotes you accordingly.

MOQ is the threshold below which a factory chooses not to produce, because the per-unit overhead allocation makes the price uncompetitive for the brand and unprofitable for the factory.

Typical apparel MOQs

Numbers vary enormously by category and factory type. As a rough field guide:

1. T-shirts and basic knits: 500 to 2,000 units per color per size break at most factories. Vertically integrated factories with in-house knitting can go lower.
2. Cut-and-sew woven shirts: 800 to 1,500 units per color.
3. Activewear and leggings: 1,000 to 3,000 per color (higher because of four-way-stretch fabric setup costs).
4. Swimwear: 500 to 1,500 per print or color.
5. Intimates and lingerie: 1,500 to 5,000 per style (high construction complexity).
6. Outerwear: 300 to 1,000 per color (lower-volume category, lower factory volume expectations).
7. Premium denim: 500 to 1,500 per wash.

These are guidelines, not gospel. Sourcing agents will quote you 5,000-unit MOQs as standard practice. Vertically integrated factories that own knitting and dyeing can frequently quote 500-unit MOQs for the same garment.

What drives MOQ down

Five things let a factory accept smaller orders without losing money:

1. In-house knitting. A factory that owns its own circular knitting can knit a small fabric run without paying a third-party mill's per-meter minimum.
2. In-house dyeing. Smaller dye-lot minimums when you own the dyeing line. Third-party dyehouses require 200 to 500 kg minimums per color.
3. Same fabric across multiple styles. A 1,000-yard fabric run that powers four styles at 250 units each can hit factory math.
4. Off-the-shelf fabric. Using a fabric the factory already has in stock from another brand's order eliminates the knitting/dyeing setup entirely.
5. A factory hungry for portfolio fit. Factories sometimes accept lower MOQs from brands whose growth trajectory they want to be on for the next 10 years.

Why low-MOQ promises from agents are usually false

When an agent advertises a 100-unit or 200-unit MOQ, they are typically aggregating orders across multiple brands in the same fabric. Your 100 units get bundled with someone else's 900. Quality suffers. Lead times stretch. The "low MOQ" comes at the cost of control, traceability, and consistency.

Ohzehn MOQs

We own knitting, dyeing, cutting, and sewing in-house. MOQ flexibility is a function of the fabric and category, not a fixed policy. For most knits we can quote a real run starting at 500 units per color. For wovens and intimates the floor is closer to 1,000. We give a real MOQ number on a 72-hour quote, not a brochure-page number.

Related terms

• What is a tech pack covers the document that determines whether a factory can quote MOQ at all.
• What is GSM in fabric is the fabric-weight spec that drives fabric runs and therefore MOQs.
• Agent vs direct factory sourcing walks through why agent-quoted MOQs and factory-quoted MOQs differ.