Guides / Cost

What Minimum Order Quantity to Expect from a Vietnamese Factory

September 18, 2026

Minimum order quantity is the first number that decides whether a Vietnamese factory will take your project at all, and it is the number most first-time buyers misread. MOQ is not a policy the factory chose to annoy you. It is the point where a run stops losing money, and it is set by things upstream of the factory as much as by the factory itself.

Typical ranges by category

These are the bands commonly quoted in Vietnam. Treat them as a starting point for conversation, not a price list. Every one of them moves with design, material and season.

Category	Commonly quoted first order
Apparel	300 to 500 pieces per style, often per colourway
Footwear	300 to 1,000 pairs per SKU
Bags and leather goods	200 to 500 units per style
Wood furniture	50 to 200 units, sometimes lower for large items
Injection molded parts	200 to 500 parts once tooling exists
Sheet metal and fabrication	10 units and up, sometimes one-off
Electronics assembly	500 to 1,000 units, driven by component lots
Printed packaging	1,000 to 3,000 units, driven by plate setup

Two patterns are worth noticing. Processes with a setup cost and no bought-in materials, such as sheet metal, have low minimums. Processes that pull in third party lots, such as electronics and printed packaging, have high ones even when the assembly work itself is trivial.

What actually sets the floor

Material lots. Fabric is woven in rolls, film is extruded in reels, resin arrives in bags of a fixed size. A factory that buys 300 metres for your 80-unit order carries the rest, and the quote reflects that.

Setup and changeover. Threading a line, changing a mold, washing out a colour and making the first good part all take hours that produce nothing sellable. Those hours are divided by your order quantity.

Component minimums. On assembled products, the binding constraint is usually a single bought-in part. A custom connector, a printed label or a specific driver may have a minimum higher than everything else in the bill of materials.

Tooling payback. Where new tooling is involved, the factory often quotes an MOQ that makes the tooling worth cutting. This is separate from the physical minimum and it is the one most open to discussion, because you can pay for the tool outright instead.

Four ways to get a smaller first run

In rough order of how well they work:

Take what is already in the building. A stock colour, a standard fabric, an existing carton size. The factory avoids buying a new lot, and the number often drops immediately.

Simplify the variants. One colour and two sizes is a very different order from four colours and five sizes at the same total units. Variants multiply setups and each one carries its own minimum.

Pay the setup separately. Offer to cover the setup or changeover as a line item rather than asking it to be absorbed. Some factories will run a small batch happily once the setup is not their risk.

Put the follow-on order in writing. A first order of 300 with a written intent for 2,000 is a different conversation from an open ended 300. It does not have to be a binding contract to change how the factory sees the job.

What rarely works is shopping the same small quantity around until someone says yes. The factory that agrees is often the one with the least work, which is not usually the one you want making your first order.

MOQ and tooling are separate decisions

Buyers frequently merge the two and get confused. Tooling is a one-time cost that buys the ability to make the part at all. MOQ is the minimum run once that ability exists.

A factory quoting a 2,000 unit minimum on a molded product is often really saying that it does not want to cut a tool for a 300 unit project. If you pay for the tool yourself and own it, the run minimum usually falls back to the physical one, which may be a few hundred parts. Before accepting an MOQ on a tooled product, ask which part of the number is tooling payback. See tooling ownership in a turnkey contract for what to write down when you do pay for the tool.

When the MOQ is a warning

A minimum far below the band for the category is worth a second look. It can mean the factory is a trading company that will place your order elsewhere, which is fine if you know it and priced it, and expensive if you did not. It can also mean the factory is quiet, which is sometimes opportunity and sometimes a sign.

A minimum far above the band usually means your product is outside what that factory is set up for. That is not a negotiation, it is a matching problem, and the answer is a different factory rather than a better argument.

Put your real quantity in the brief

Quote the quantity you will actually order, plus the annual volume you expect. Factories price the first order and plan capacity against the annual number, and giving both usually produces a better proposal than giving either alone. Understating the first order to seem easy, or overstating the annual to seem attractive, both end the same way: a repriced order at the worst moment.

MOQ on reorders and during a ramp

The first order minimum is not the number you live with. Two things change afterwards.

Reorders are usually easier. Setup is understood, the material source is proven and the factory has a reason to keep you. Many factories will run a reorder below the original minimum, particularly if it is scheduled rather than urgent. Ask what the reorder minimum is at the same time as you ask about the first order, because the answer sometimes makes a larger first order unnecessary.

Scheduled releases beat single orders. A commitment of 6,000 units across four releases is a better proposition for the factory than four separate orders of 1,500, because material is bought once and the line is planned. Buyers often get better pricing and smaller individual releases by committing to the total rather than negotiating each batch.

This is the practical route out of a minimum that is genuinely too large for you: not a smaller order, but the same order split across a planned year.

When MOQ and tooling collide on a new product

The hardest case is a molded or printed product with an unproven market. The tooling needs volume to justify itself, the volume needs a proven product, and the product cannot be proven without units.

Three routes out, in rough order of cost:

Prototype tooling. A single cavity or soft tool, rated for a few thousand shots, at a fraction of the production tool cost. You get real parts in real material and a production tool becomes a later decision.

A different process for the first run. Machined, 3D printed or fabricated versions of a part that will eventually be molded. Higher unit cost, no tooling, and it answers the market question before the tooling question.

A near-stock product with your modifications. Many categories have base products that factories already tool. Changing colour, finish, branding and packaging is a much smaller commitment than an original design, and it tests demand honestly.

None of these are the cheap way to make your product at volume. They are the cheap way to find out whether you should.

Send your project brief with the first order quantity and the expected annual volume, and we will match it with manufacturers that already run at that size. If you are still deciding what scope to ask for, start with what a turnkey manufacturing contract actually covers.

Frequently asked questions

Keep reading

• Bill of Materials for a Turnkey Order: How to Read the Cost Line by Line
• What Drives the Cost of Turnkey Manufacturing in Vietnam