Buyer Guides
Pajama MOQ Explained
Why sleepwear factories have minimum order quantities, what actually sets the number, the difference between style and colourway minimums, and how to launch on a small first order.
By PajamaWorks Team, Sleepwear production team, Dongguan Hualingniao Apparel ·
MOQ — minimum order quantity — is the number that decides whether a factory and a brand can work together at all, and it is the thing new brands find most frustrating. It helps enormously to know that the minimum is usually not the factory being difficult. It is arithmetic happening upstream.
We are not going to print our own number here, because a single number would be misleading: our minimum genuinely changes with the style, fabric and customisation. What follows is how that number gets decided, so you can shape an order that comes in under it.
The minimum is usually the fabric’s, not the factory’s
This is the part that explains almost everything.
Fabric mills run production in batches. Dyeing a colour, weaving or knitting a run, finishing it — these have setup costs that do not shrink just because you want less. So a mill sets its own minimum per colour, and every brand ordering that fabric inherits it.
Which means a garment factory quoting you a minimum is often passing along a constraint it did not set. It also means the lever you have is the fabric decision, not the negotiation.
Style minimum versus colourway minimum
These are different numbers and confusing them causes most of the surprises:
- Style minimum — how many units of one design make a sensible production run. Driven by the factory: pattern setup, marker making, line changeover.
- Colourway minimum — how many units of one colour of one fabric. Driven by the mill.
A range of three styles in one colour is straightforward. One style in six colours can be much harder, even at the same total quantity, because it is six separate fabric batches.
The practical rule: add styles before you add colours.
What raises a minimum
- Custom dyeing. You are commissioning a dye batch. This is the single biggest driver.
- Custom woven or knitted fabric. You are commissioning production of the fabric itself.
- Custom prints. Printing has setup costs — screens, or a print run minimum — that need volume behind them.
- Woven labels and custom packaging. Trims have their own minimums, usually lower than fabric but not zero. See labels and packaging.
- Unusual sizes or an extended size range. A wide range spreads your quantity thin across sizes.
What lowers a minimum
- Stock fabric. Buying from what a mill already holds removes the batch problem entirely. This is the most effective single move available to a new brand — see fabric sourcing.
- Sharing a fabric across styles. One fabric used for a set, a nightgown and a robe reaches the fabric minimum three times faster than three fabrics.
- Fewer colourways. Two strong colours beat five hesitant ones, commercially as well as operationally.
- Standard trims on the first order. Launch with simple labelling, upgrade to custom woven trims once volume justifies it.
- A tighter size range. Cover the sizes that actually sell first.
How to design a small first order
If your budget only supports a modest launch, structure it like this:
- Pick one stock fabric you genuinely like the hand of.
- Build two to four styles from it — for example a long set, a short set and a nightgown.
- Choose two colourways, one safe and one distinctive.
- Use a compact size range and extend later, once you have sales data telling you where demand actually sits.
- Keep trims simple on order one.
This gets you a coherent collection that reads as a range, while concentrating your quantity behind a single fabric batch. It is what we recommend to almost every brand launching a first season.
Questions worth asking any supplier
- Is your minimum per style, per colourway, or per order?
- Is that your minimum or the mill’s?
- Which fabrics do you hold in stock, and in which colours?
- Does the minimum change if I use the same fabric across several styles?
- What is the minimum for a repeat order?
That last one matters. Repeats are often easier than first orders because the development is done and the fabric relationship exists.
Beware a minimum of zero
A supplier who will make any quantity of anything, in any custom fabric, is either subcontracting your order somewhere you cannot see, or holding leftover fabric they need to clear. Neither is necessarily fatal, but both are worth understanding before you commit.
A minimum is a sign that someone is doing real production planning.
Tell us the styles and fabrics you have in mind and we will confirm the actual minimum for your project rather than a generic figure. Send your requirements.
