Minimum order quantity is the smallest run a factory will produce. It is the first thing that kills a specification, and it is routinely misread in a way that makes a project look feasible when it is not.
It is set per item, not per order
This is the part that catches people.
An MOQ is almost always attached to a single item in a single colour or finish — not to the order as a whole. A factory quoting a minimum on a tile means that minimum for each colourway you pick. Choosing four colours does not split one minimum four ways. It creates four minimums.
The same applies to finishes on fittings. A range offered in eleven finishes is eleven separate production items as far as the factory's scheduling is concerned. Specify a basin mixer in chrome for the ensuites and matte black for the powder room and you have two items, each with its own floor.
This is why a schedule with a lot of variety is harder to place than a schedule with a lot of volume, even when the total square metreage is identical. Variety is the expensive thing, not size.
Why the floor exists at all
It is not a negotiating posture. It is what it costs to start.
Before a single sellable piece exists, a run needs the line set up, the colour or glaze mixed and matched, moulds or screens changed over, and a first pass run and scrapped. Those costs land the same whether the run is a hundred pieces or ten thousand. The minimum is the point at which the setup stops being most of the unit price.
Two things follow:
- The more setup an item needs, the higher its floor. A stock colourway already scheduled costs a factory almost nothing to add to. A custom colour, a non-standard size, or a finish that needs its own coating cycle costs a great deal.
- The floor moves. It is lower against a run already on the schedule, and lower again in a quiet period. It is not a constant, which is precisely why a published figure would be misleading.
Why no minimum is printed on this site
Every product page says "On request", and that is a deliberate answer rather than a missing one.
A published MOQ would have to be the worst case — the highest floor, in the least favourable month, for the most awkward variant — because anything else would be a figure we could not honour. Read as a general number, it would talk people out of projects that are perfectly placeable, and it would be wrong for almost every real enquiry.
The useful version of this answer is specific to what you are actually ordering. It is also frequently lower than the number a factory would quote a stranger, because a factory scheduling a run against a standing account is not in the same position as one quoting a first-time buyer for a single job.
What to send to get a real figure
An MOQ question answered in the abstract is worth very little. Answered against a real schedule, it takes about a day. What is needed:
- The item and the finish or colourway — the specific one, not the family. This is the unit the minimum attaches to.
- The quantity you actually want, with the unit — square metres, pieces, linear metres. An approximate figure is fine; a range is fine.
- How many variants the job needs, and whether any of them are negotiable. This is usually where a marginal project becomes a placeable one.
- When it has to land on site. Lead time and minimum interact — a floor that is unreachable this month may not be next.
You will get a figure back in writing, or a plain statement that we do not have it yet and when we will.
The short version
Ask what the minimum is set against before you ask how big it is. Four colourways is four minimums. Consolidating a schedule onto fewer variants does more to make a project possible than negotiating any single number.
