FAQ · minimum order quantity · setup fees · blanket orders

Can we order just one piece? Real MOQ by decoration method

The honest answer is that almost no decoration method is priced or set up to run a single unit economically, but a single piece is almost always achievable for a price, and a small run is usually achievable for a known cost — what changes between methods is where the fixed cost sits. This page sets out the minimum order quantity that each common decoration method actually carries on a custom merchandise programme in Armenia and the wider EAEU, what a single piece costs in practice when a buyer genuinely needs one, and how blanket orders across a quarter or a year turn the one-piece question from a recurring argument into a planned procedure.

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Why almost every method has a minimum, and where the minimum lives

The custom decoration industry is a fixed-cost business. Every method carries a non-recurring charge that has to be recovered before the factory earns anything from the order, and every method carries a per-unit time or material cost that only becomes reasonable above a certain volume. A one-piece order is therefore not impossible; it is uneconomic at the unit level, and the unit-level price reflects that. The genuine questions for a buyer are: which method has the lowest fixed cost, which method wastes the least material at small volume, and whether the small run is genuinely small or whether it can be absorbed into a blanket order that recurs.

The fixed cost is not always called a setup fee. In screen printing it is the screen burning and the colour separations; in embroidery it is the digitising of the logo and the thread change; in DTG it is the pre-treatment and the ICC profile build; in sublimation it is the transfer paper, the colour profile and the heat-press calibration; in laser engraving it is the artwork vectorisation and the test etching. The unit cost is the time on the press or machine, the consumables per unit, and the operator's attention per unit. A method with a low setup fee but a high unit cost (laser engraving) is the inverse of a method with a high setup fee and a low unit cost (screen print at volume), and each is rational for a different order shape.

The practical conclusion is that the question should not be "what is your MOQ?" because every supplier will quote something and the answer will not be the useful number. The useful question is "what does a single piece actually cost on this method, and what does the cost curve look like at ten, fifty and two hundred pieces?" A supplier that can put both numbers in writing is a supplier who has run this conversation before.

Lowest fixed cost: DTG, sublimation, laser engraving
Highest fixed cost: Multi-colour screen print, multi-position embroidery
Typical single-piece surcharge: Three to ten times the unit cost at 100 pieces
Blanket order mechanic: Releases the setup once; refills recover only unit cost
Sample lead time: 2–3 working days for a digital mock-up; 5–7 for a physical sample
Setup files retained: 12–24 months on file for re-use on reorder

What each common method actually costs at small volume

The numbers below describe typical commercial practice for this category on apparel and accessory items in the regional supply base. They are planning figures rather than firm quotations; every quote is fixed against an artwork file, a fabric or substrate specification, and a quantity, and the price on a real order will move with any of those three inputs. The objective of the table is to give a buyer a defensible shape to plan against rather than a single point.

Screen printing (silkscreen)

The most expensive method per colour setup and the cheapest per unit at volume. A standard four-colour print on a cotton t-shirt carries four screens, four squeegees and a flash cure between layers — each one a fixed cost that has to be amortised across the run. At one piece, the fixed cost is the entire unit price. At ten pieces, the fixed cost is shared ten ways. At five hundred pieces, the per-unit cost collapses to roughly a fifth of the ten-piece cost. The method imposes a hard floor: most factories will not burn four screens to print a single shirt, and the practical minimum lies between 25 and 50 pieces depending on the colour count. A one-piece print is achievable as a reprint from existing screens held on file, but that requires a prior order against which the screens were burned. New screens for a one-piece print are unusual and carry a per-colour charge that is paid once and is not refunded on a non-existent reorder.

Embroidery

The digitising fee is the major fixed cost and the per-unit cost is dominated by stitch count. A logo with fifteen thousand stitches on a polo shirt is roughly twice the per-unit cost of a logo with seven thousand stitches on the same shirt, because machine time scales with the stitches the digitiser chose. The minimum practical run sits between five and twenty pieces depending on the factory's schedule, and a single embroidered piece is technically possible at roughly three to five times the per-unit cost at one hundred pieces. The setup is not held on file the way screens are, so each new one-piece order pays for the digitising again, which is why embroidery is the worst method for true single-piece replenishment and the best method for an annual programme where the digitising is amortised across a year of refills. Multi-position embroidery on a single garment doubles or triples the digitising cost because each position is a separate digitised file.

DTG (direct-to-garment) and sublimation

Both methods carry a low fixed cost because there is no screen to burn, no plate to make, and no thread to load. The fixed cost is in the pre-treatment and the ICC profile build. A pre-treatment formula for cotton DTG takes five to ten minutes per garment before printing; an ICC profile is built once per fabric and held on file for the next order. The result is that a single DTG print on a cotton t-shirt is genuinely economical, with the unit cost at one piece only fifty to eighty per cent higher than the unit cost at one hundred pieces of the same design. Sublimation flattens the cost curve at low volume because the per-sheet transfer cost dominates and the press cycle is fixed at forty-five to ninety seconds per piece. The ceiling on both methods is the press cycle: a single heat press or a single DTG printer is the rate-limiting step, and a single-piece order on either method consumes the machine's full attention for that unit of time.

Laser engraving, pad print and tonal methods

Laser engraving on a metal pen, a bamboo notebook, a leather patch or an anodised aluminium bottle is the cheapest method to set up and the most expensive per unit to run, because the per-unit time on the laser bed is several seconds of focused work for an item whose blank cost is a few thousand Armenian dram. Pad printing on curved objects — mugs, bottles, ball closures — carries a cliché plate that is cheaper than a screen but still fixed, and is the right method for printing around the curvature of a cylindrical item where a screen would distort. UV direct print and pad print are the right methods for one-piece prototyping because the artwork is loaded once and the job can be repeated the next day at the same setup cost. All three are the methods to choose for a one-piece proof, a one-piece sample for a stakeholder who has to hold something physical, and a one-piece replenishment of an item that was genuinely a one-off mistake rather than a programme mistake.

Sample costs, setup fees and design fees — what is fixed and what is negotiable

The decorations industry uses three different words for charges that look similar and behave differently, and the difference matters when a buyer is comparing two quotes that look identical at the headline level. A sample cost is the charge to produce a single physical item on the production line, not a digital mock-up; it is a real cost because the factory has to schedule the line and the operators. A setup fee is the non-recurring charge to prepare production for a method — the screen, the digitised file, the cliché plate, the ICC profile. A design fee is the charge to prepare the artwork itself, which is more often than not a separate supplier's work and is sometimes rebadged by a merchandise vendor as a setup fee in order to keep the per-unit price looking lower.

Sample cost. A pre-production sample covers the factory's allocation of staff time and a small quantity of blank goods, ink or thread. The typical charge is a fixed amount per sample, separate from any subsequent production order, and is either refunded against the order, written off against a stated minimum order, or absorbed into the unit price. Where two competitors quote at different sample costs, the difference is real and worth seeing; where one supplier charges nothing, the supplier is either absorbing the cost (acceptable, and worth noting) or will load the production price to recover it (worth asking about explicitly).

Setup fee (screen). A screen is the most concrete example. The fee covers exposing the screen, registering it on the press, and bringing the colour to a print-ready density. A one-colour screen for an A3-area print is typically the cheapest unit in this category; a four-colour print on a dark garment with underbase, highlight white and discharge ink is several times that. The fee is paid once per colour per design per order; it is not paid again on a reorder that uses the same screens, which is why the question "will you hold my screens on file?" is worth asking and worth recording in the contract.

Setup fee (embroidery). The digitising fee is the embroidery analogue. A logo is converted from a vector or raster artwork into a stitch file in a format that the embroidery machine can read; the fee covers the digitiser's time and is paid once per design. The fee is not refunded against a reorder because the digitised file is kept on file. It is paid again, however, if the artwork changes in a non-trivial way or if a different machine family is used for a different garment — a digitised file for a Tajima machine is not always portable to a Barudan or ZSK without a re-digitise.

Setup fee (DTG). The pre-treatment solution and the ICC profile are the DTG setup. Pre-treatment is a chemical process applied to the garment before printing; an ICC profile is a colour map that tells the printer how to render a particular fabric's colour response. Both are constructed once per fabric per order, held on file, and not charged again on a refill of the same design on the same blank. Where a buyer moves between fabrics (from a 180 gsm cotton to a 220 gsm cotton, or from cotton to a poly-cotton blend), the pre-treatment formula changes and a new profile is built, which is a re-setup rather than a fresh design fee.

Design fees. A design fee is paid to a graphic designer or a studio for time spent preparing the artwork for production: vectorising a low-resolution raster file, separating colours for screen print, drawing a tonal map for embroidery, or building a print-ready digital mock-up. It is not the same as a setup fee, even when the merchandise supplier charges the buyer's invoice line item under the same word. A quote that confuses the two makes it harder to compare against another supplier and harder to use as the basis for a blanket order that releases the design once across multiple refills.

When a one-piece run genuinely makes sense — and when it does not

A one-piece run is the right answer in three situations and the wrong answer in five, and the discrimination is more useful than any blanket statement about minimum order quantity. The three situations in which a single piece is genuinely the correct answer are: a pre-approval sample that a stakeholder has to physically hold before a programme is signed off; a one-off gift for a senior external party where the perceived value is in the gesture rather than the unit; and a true replenishment of an item that was a one-piece mistake rather than a programme mistake. In each case the cost premium is paid knowingly and recovered in some other dimension — a signed-off programme, a relationship moment, or the absence of fifty unwanted units sitting in a cupboard.

The five situations in which a one-piece run is the wrong answer are: a first impression to test a market (use a small run of ten to twenty instead); a stock replenishment that will be repeated (use a blanket order); an item with a method-specific floor that cannot be hit at one piece (use the lowest-floor method instead — DTG or laser engraving for a single apparel piece); a one-piece purchase priced as if it were a hundred-piece purchase and accepted by a buyer who has not asked (ask for the one-piece price explicitly); and a one-piece purchase where the design fee has been silently loaded into the unit price (ask whether the design fee is itemised on the quote, separately from the setup and the unit price).

For the genuinely small but not single-piece volume — somewhere between ten and fifty units — DTG and pad print are the right methods because they set up quickly, run without screens, and the per-unit premium is bounded. For the larger volume of one hundred pieces and above, screen print is cheaper per unit than DTG above about seventy-five pieces and cheaper than embroidery above about fifty pieces on a five-thousand-stitch logo. The crossover is not always at the same point because fabric, ink, stitch and quantity tolerances vary, which is why two prices against the same artwork at the same quantity are usually telling a story about the supplier's equipment and overheads rather than the supplier's honesty, and why a written quote that names the cost-shape assumptions is the more useful document to compare.

Blanket orders — how to convert the one-piece question into a programme

The most reliable way to remove the one-piece problem from a recurring order is the blanket purchase order. A blanket order sets up the artwork, the screens, the digitised files, the ICC profiles, the blank goods and the pricing structure once, and releases them against individual call-offs over weeks or months. The unit price on each call-off reflects only the marginal cost of pressing, sewing or engraving that batch; the fixed costs were paid on the first release and amortised over the expected total quantity.

The structure is straightforward. The blanket order names a total quantity or a quantity range, the unit price by SKU, the validity period (typically six or twelve months), the call-off minimum (a number that allows the factory to schedule a batch without resetting the line), the lead time per call-off after the first, and the price-hold mechanism (fixed price, indexed price, or fixed with a periodic review). Each call-off is a release against the blanket, not a new order; the artwork, the setup and the price follow automatically. The contract should also name what happens to the fixed costs if the actual total quantity falls short of the committed range, because most factories will either re-invoice the uncovered portion or refuse to release the refill price, and a written agreement reached in advance is cheaper than a written argument reached afterwards.

The economic case is straightforward. A buyer who will consume three hundred pieces across a year but who cannot predict the month pays an effective per-unit price close to the unit price at one hundred pieces on screen print or at fifty pieces on embroidery — depending on how the blanket was negotiated — and avoids paying the setup fee nine or ten times on individual monthly orders. The setup fee is the structural difference between the blanket and the spot order; the spot order is the small order that pays for the same setup the blanket has already paid for. In EAEU customs practice, a blanket order also has documentary advantages: a single contract, a single supplier qualification, and a single set of acceptance criteria carried across all call-offs, rather than a new contract per call-off that has to be reviewed and signed each time.

The discipline that keeps a blanket order healthy is the consumption forecast. A blanket without a forecast is a vendor's commitment without a buyer's commitment, and suppliers price for the risk in the gap rather than for the volume that has been committed. A buyer who can state, with whatever accuracy their business allows, the expected total over the blanket period will be quoted a tighter price than a buyer who asks the supplier to assume the volume. Where the forecast is genuinely uncertain, the response is to set the blanket with a stated minimum and a stated maximum, an explicit mechanism for true-ups at the end of the period, and a price review at a named trigger point that lets both sides adjust to actual consumption rather than to planned consumption.

Reading a quote that mixes sample, setup, design and unit costs

The fastest way to tell whether a quote is honest about the cost shape is to read it as four separate numbers rather than as a headline price. Itemised quotes list, for each SKU and each method, the one-time design fee, the one-time setup fee, the unit price at the stated quantity, and the volume discount if a higher quantity is committed. A quote that lands as a single line per SKU with a single price has hidden somewhere the cost of a design, a setup and an operator's attention that the buyer has not been asked to confirm.

The four numbers mean different things at different points. The design fee is paid once per design across all refills; the setup fee is paid once per design per order on methods that build a new setup each time (screen print, embroidery) and once per design across refills on methods that hold the setup on file (DTG, sublimation). The unit price is paid per delivered piece and reflects the marginal cost of producing that unit on the production line. The volume discount, where offered, is the price that the unit price collapses to at the next quantity tier, and is usually tied to a named commitment rather than to a wish.

For a buyer comparing two suppliers, the right comparison is on the four numbers side by side, not on the per-piece headline. Two suppliers with identical per-piece prices may have very different setup and design fees; two suppliers with different per-piece prices may have very different setup and design fees. The question for the buyer is the total cost at the buyer's expected quantity, not the price at the supplier's quoted quantity, which is why the better quote includes a cost at the buyer's volume rather than only a cost at the supplier's reference volume.

Lead time and stock — what a one-piece order actually ships against

A one-piece order is as much a question about what is on the shelf as it is a question about what happens on the production line, and the two interact in ways that change the answer materially. A blank-good item that is held in stock at the factory — a pen, a notebook, a ceramic mug, a standard cotton polo in a popular colour — can move through a one-piece decoration within two to three working days on the methods that hold their setup on file, because the only variable is the production slot. A blank-good item that has to be ordered in — a non-stock garment colour, a special Pantone, an unusual bottle shape, a non-standard cap colour — adds the blank-goods lead time to the decoration lead time, which can move a one-piece order from a few working days to two or three weeks.

The interaction matters because buyers often assume the lead time on a one-piece order is the decoration lead time, when in fact the binding constraint is whichever of the two is longer. The right question to ask a supplier is: "what blank goods do you hold in stock for this product, and what is the production slot on a one-piece run from a held setup?" A supplier that cannot answer that question cleanly is usually buying blanks case-by-case and recovering the carry cost in the unit price; a supplier that can answer it cleanly is usually holding stock on a known catalogue item and quoting a known lead time.

For a buyer who is planning a programme around one-piece replenishments, the practical advice is to keep the blank goods in stock by default, accept the small carrying cost as the price of being able to replenish in a week, and use the decoration method with the lowest fixed cost (DTG, sublimation or laser) so that the only cost on a refill is the marginal production cost. The combination of a held blank goods inventory and a held decoration setup is what turns a one-piece order from an exception into a routine, and a routine into a planning line item rather than a recurring argument.

For a buyer who is not yet ready to commit to stock, the right intermediate step is a contract sample run of the same design on the same blank goods at the same decoration method that the future one-piece refills will use. A sample that has already been produced and signed off against the artwork, the fabric and the Pantone references is not a free option — it still has to be paid for — but it removes the proofing round from every subsequent refill and replaces the proofing round's lead time with the production slot's lead time. Sample rounds that take three weeks to proof cost the same money and lose a week of lead time on every refill, which is why the artefact "the sample that was approved" is worth holding in the buyer's own files as well as the supplier's.

Questions buyers ask about single-piece and small-volume orders

What is the absolute minimum a single piece will cost?

It depends on the method and the blank. A laser-engraved bamboo notebook from a held setup is often the cheapest single piece, typically in the low tens of thousands of Armenian dram for an item whose unit cost at one hundred pieces is a third of that. A single DTG-printed cotton t-shirt from a held profile is the cheapest apparel item, typically two to three times the unit cost at one hundred pieces. Screen-printed apparel and multi-position embroidered apparel at one piece are the most expensive, sometimes ten times the per-unit cost at volume, which is why the per-method table above is the more useful figure to plan against than the headline "starting from" price.

Will the screens and digitised files be held for re-use?

Yes, the standard practice is to hold screens and digitised files for twelve to twenty-four months, free of charge, against a repeat order. Holding the artwork on file does not commit either side to a specific price on a future order; it commits the factory to not charging the setup fee again on a reprint of the same design. Where the garment blank is changed (a different shirt model, a different notebook size), the colour-on-fabric may need to be confirmed with a physical proof, which is a five-to-seven working day exercise rather than a setup exercise.

Does the design fee disappear if I confirm the production order?

Almost always. Most factories absorb vectorisation and colour separation into the setup fee or quote the design fee as a separate line item that is nullified once a production order of a stated minimum is placed. The numbers to ask for are the design fee as a stand-alone charge, the production minimum at which the design fee is waived, and the unit price with both fees included. A quote that does not break the price into these three numbers is a quote that is harder to compare against another supplier and harder to use as the basis for a blanket order.

Is Corp-Merch affiliated with, endorsed by, or an official supplier to the brands, software vendors, certification bodies, or trade associations referenced on this page?

No. Corp-Merch is an independent B2B merchandise supplier. References to Pantone LLC, the International Organization for Standardization, ASTM International, the Specialty Graphic Imaging Association, supplier-side equipment manufacturers and any brand, software vendor, certification body or trade association are informational only and imply no partnership, sponsorship, endorsement or official-supplier relationship. Quantities, costs and lead times describe typical commercial practice for this category rather than a fixed quotation.

This page is written for buyers, sourcing teams and procurement officers arranging custom merchandise in Armenia, the wider EAEU and international markets. Corp-Merch is an independent B2B merchandise supplier. Minimum order quantities, sample charges and setup costs reflect typical commercial practice for the methods described; they are not a fixed quotation and each order is priced individually against a written specification and a signed contract. Brand names, method names and certification references are used factually to identify the technology, not to suggest any commercial relationship with their owners.