Minimum order quantity for clothing in Bangladesh, by product

Our own minimum order is 500 pieces per style and colour, t-shirts and hoodies included. Denim, jackets, woven shirts, workwear and uniforms start at 2,000, underwear at 5,000 pieces and socks at 5,000 pairs, all per style and colour. Minimums come from dye lots, pattern costs, line changeover and trim minimums. This guide explains where they come from, what the numbers usually look like by production route, what a genuinely small run involves, how to negotiate below a minimum, and how we handle small orders through our sister factory.

Our own minimums, by category

Orders placed through CMB Sourcing Ltd., in our sister factory or an audited partner factory, start at 500 pieces per style and colour, and some categories start higher. Every figure below is per style and colour, as of 8 October 2026.

If you need fewer pieces than these, the section on small orders below explains a separate route through our sister factory from 150 pieces per style and colour.

Why factories set minimums

A minimum order quantity is not a sales tactic. It comes from four real constraints:

• Fabric. Mills knit and dye in batches. A custom colour means a dye lot, and dye lots have their own minimums, usually far more fabric than a 150-piece style needs.
• Pattern and grading. Pattern making, grading across sizes and a fit sample cost the same whether you make 100 pieces or 10,000.
• Line changeover. A sewing line has to be re-set for a new style: new machines, folders and a trained sequence. Short runs mean more downtime per garment.
• Trims and packaging. Woven labels, hang tags, zips and cartons all have supplier minimums.

This is why large export factories, the ones making tens of thousands of pieces a week, rarely accept a few hundred pieces. It is not worth stopping a line for.

Per style, per colour, or per order?

The same number means different things depending on what it is attached to, and suppliers are not always clear. A minimum per style counts every colour and size of one design together. A minimum per colour is stricter: three colourways of one t-shirt means three times the commitment, because each colour is its own dye lot. A minimum per order is the loosest, letting you spread pieces across styles, and is more common with stock fabric. Always ask which one applies, and ask separately about the minimum per size, since a factory can rarely cut a single size efficiently.

What minimums look like by production route

There is no single Bangladesh minimum. There are three routes, each with its own economics.

The middle route is the one most new brands actually need, and the one most export factories cannot offer. The blanks route is real and fast, but it is not manufacturing your garment; the export route is where your price per piece falls, once you have a style worth a thousand pieces.

What counts as low MOQ, honestly

Watch the wording. Suppliers advertising 25 or 50 pieces are usually printing or embroidering onto ready-made blanks. That is a real service, but you are choosing from someone else’s garment: their fit, their fabric, their labels.

Cut-and-sew production from your own pattern, with your fabric, fit and labels, realistically starts at 100 to 150 pieces per style and colour, and our sister factory’s minimum is 150. Below that, the set-up cost per garment makes the price hard to justify, and a supplier who promises it is either using blanks or planning to lose money on you until the reorder.

How we handle small orders

Our audited partner factories are set up for larger runs, so we do not take 150-piece orders as our own. Instead we place them with our sister company, Collective Studio Ltd., a factory in Narayanganj established in 2019 that takes small runs to support new businesses and creators. Its published terms:

• From 150 pieces per style, per colour, cut and sewn from your pattern rather than printed onto blanks.
• Roughly 40–50 days door to door from an approved sample, delivered DDP.
• Organic cotton on request: ask for the factory’s GOTS licence number and check it in the GOTS public database before you order.
• Categories: t-shirts, tanks and polos; hoodies and sweatshirts; joggers, leggings and shorts; activewear; loungewear, sleepwear and underwear; beachwear; and caps and bags.

We manage the order the same way we manage any other: tech pack, sampling, fabric approvals, inline and final inspection, and shipping documents. You always know which factory is making your goods, and Collective Studio prices these orders itself, separately from our own quotes. Collective Studio Ltd. is our sister company, with its own website, prices and minimum. Both our founders work with it: Homaira Jashim is a co-founder and AB Rahman is Head of Growth; see our founders.

Five ways to keep a small order affordable

• Use stock fabric in colours the mill already holds, instead of a custom dye lot.
• Cut the colour count. The minimum applies per colour, so three colours means three times the commitment.
• Start from proven blocks rather than developing a new fit from scratch.
• Keep the size range tight for the first run, then extend it once you know what sells.
• Simplify decoration. One print position or one embroidery keeps set-up costs down.

How to negotiate below a minimum

Minimums move more often than suppliers admit, but only for reasons a factory can justify to itself. Offer to take stock fabric so no dye lot is needed. Offer to merge two styles that share a fabric and most of a pattern, so the line is set once. Accept a surcharge per piece for the short run, agreed up front rather than discovered on the invoice. Order in the factory’s quiet season, which for most of Bangladesh is between the big spring–summer and autumn–winter programmes. And show a reorder plan: a factory will take a small first run from a brand that can explain where the second run comes from. What rarely works is asking for the export price at the small-run quantity; the arithmetic in the cost sheet does not allow it.

What to expect on price

A 150-piece run costs more per garment than a 1,000-piece run of the same style, because sampling, set-up and minimum trim buys are spread over fewer pieces. Our own quotes are for orders at our own minimums (500 pieces per style and colour for t-shirts), not for 150-piece runs; see what makes up a garment price to understand which choices move the number most, and what the small-run route adds.

Sample first, commit second

Whatever the minimum, do not commit to it before a sample. A development sample from your pattern, then a pre-production sample in the actual fabric, tells you whether the fit, the hand-feel and the construction are what you want, for a fraction of the cost of finding out on the bulk. It also tells you how the supplier communicates when something needs changing, which matters more than the minimum once you are in production.

Checking a small-run supplier

Suppliers that advertise a low MOQ are not one kind of business: some print onto ready-made blanks, some are small studios that cut and sew in tens or hundreds of pieces, and some are factories or buying houses with a small-run route. Before you compare prices, ask whether the minimum is per style or per colour, which fabrics are in stock, and which factory will make the order, at which address. Our guide on how to choose a low MOQ clothing manufacturer explains the three kinds of supplier and the questions that expose a false minimum.

When you outgrow small runs

Once a style sells and you reorder in thousands, it usually makes sense to move it to a larger factory with its own knitting and dyeing, where your price per piece falls and custom colours become possible. That is our job: match each style to the factory that suits its quantity and construction. See how small orders work with us, or send your tech pack.