Young brands entering the fashion industry often face the challenge of high Minimum Order Quantities (MOQs). Suppliers often require large quantities of fabric to be taken off, which can be difficult and costly for smaller businesses with tighter budgets.
However, there are a few tips and tricks with which sustainable production is possible despite minimum quantities. This was one of the topics at the CO Expo this year. Common Objective’s annual event is all about the latest innovations and best practices in sustainable and fair production.
One presentation in particular dealt with ways to create successful and sustainable collections that are produced in small batches.
Find the right partners
It may sound obvious, but researching and finding the perfect delivery company that specializes in the product you need pays off. This allows even small orders to be produced with maximum efficiency, said Corbin Bryant, director of Purnaa, a Nepal-based fair trade guaranteed company that specializes in producing baseball caps with short lead times and low minimum order quantities.
“Factories often specialize in a certain area. So you may already be producing something very similar to your product. This makes it less complicated for them to process a special order that might be a little different and specific to your brand than it would be making tooling for an entirely new product for someone else,” said Bryant. “So it’s really important to find a specialized company.”
Choose materials intelligently to increase cost efficiency
Bryant also pointed out the importance of choosing timeless designs that use available materials that are likely already in stock or can be sourced locally. This reduces the minimum purchase quantities.
“We have a few customers who work with us and pay a deposit so we’re able to keep their materials in stock all the time, and then they have maybe a few dozen different styles that can be made with those materials .”
“Your delivery company may need to order specific materials for your product, but if you design different models and they all use the same material for a few colorways, they can buy a larger quantity of material at once,” Bryant says.
building long-term relationships
The importance of building long-term relationships with partners should also not be underestimated, according to Bryant. Suppliers appreciate consistency, even if it’s not necessarily about large quantities. “If you always work something with the same supplier, but only in small quantities that you need at the moment, they can set a lower price for you because they can rely on the production line being busy,” he said . “It’s the downtime that ends up being really expensive for the suppliers.”
In addition, you can consider digital prints for highly customizable and very small order batches. “With digital printing, you can order very small quantities and make a lot of different prints and colors. This eliminates the setup, chemical processing and machinery required to dye a larger batch.”
“It’s also possible to customize very small quantities, so sometimes it can even be a personalised, one-off garment.”
Finding an attractive niche
Another way to handle minimum order quantities is to find a sustainable niche to capture retail and client interest. “There are always people looking for niches,” says Nancy Forman, founder and creative director of the Accessory think tank and former executive at Bloomingdales. “The buyers have a mandate to source and manage sustainable products, which they try to fulfil.”
Forman gave the example of a British-Brazilian brand Belo Bags, which repurposes old products like car seat belts into bags and accessories. The brand also donates two to six meals to the Casa De Maria charity, which serves the homeless and needy in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
This article was published on FashionUnited.com. Translation and editing: Barbara Russ