The short answer
- Setup cost is the same on twelve pieces as on two hundred
- A minimum order value usually works better than a piece count
- Screen printing needs a real minimum; digital methods often need none
- Publish it, so it reads as policy rather than as a judgement about the customer
- Have a paid route for below-minimum work instead of a flat refusal
A minimum order is not a way of turning away small customers. It is the acknowledgement that the fixed work in a job — quoting, artwork, ordering blanks, setup, packing, invoicing — does not shrink when the quantity does, and that somebody has to pay for it.
Why minimums exist
Walk a twelve-piece screen print order end to end and count the steps: the enquiry, the quote, the artwork check, the blank order, the receiving, the screen, the setup, the print, the cure, the fold, the invoice.
Now do the same for two hundred pieces. Every step is identical except the printing. The only part that scales with quantity is the part that takes the least skill.
Small orders are not less profitable per piece. They are less profitable per hour, and hours are what you actually have.
A shop without a minimum fills its week with jobs that each consume a morning and return the margin of an hour. It looks busy, the schedule is full, and the month does not add up.
Piece count or order value
| Piece minimum | Value minimum | |
|---|---|---|
| Simple to state | Yes | Yes |
| Handles expensive blanks | No | Yes |
| Handles many colours | No | Yes |
| Familiar to customers | Very | Less so |
| Blocks a good small job | Often | Rarely |
A piece minimum treats twenty-four cheap tees with a one-colour print as equal to twenty-four embroidered softshells, which they are not. A value minimum accepts the second happily and asks the first for a setup fee.
The practical answer for most shops is a minimum order value with a low piece floor underneath it, so a six-piece jacket order can go through while a six-piece tee order pays a setup charge.
Setting the number
Work it out rather than copying a competitor
- Time the fixed work on a real small job, end to end
- Cost that time at what an hour is worth to you
- Add the margin you need on top of blanks and consumables
- The result is the value below which the job costs you money
- Round it to something memorable and publish it
Most shops that do this exercise honestly find their real number is higher than the one they have been using, often considerably. That is uncomfortable and useful — the gap is the amount every below-minimum job has been costing.
Review it when your costs move. A minimum set three years ago against different blank prices and different wages is a number describing a business you no longer run, and revisiting it is part of the same discipline as reviewing prices generally.
By decoration method
| Method | Fixed cost | Minimum needed |
|---|---|---|
| Screen print | High — a screen per colour | Yes, meaningful |
| Embroidery | Digitising, one-off | Low, if the file exists |
| DTG | Near zero | Often none |
| DTF | Low; gang sheets help | Low |
| Vinyl | Low, but slow per piece | Value-based |
This is the argument for having a digital method available even in a screen shop. The one-off and sample enquiries that a screen minimum turns away are exactly the work DTG or DTF handles profitably, so the minimum stops being a refusal and becomes a routing decision.
Exceptions worth making
A rigid minimum applied without judgement costs work that was worth having. Keep the policy and allow named exceptions.
Reasonable exceptions
- Reorders — screens and files exist, so the fixed cost is already paid
- Existing accounts topping up an earlier run
- Samples ahead of a large order, charged at sample rates
- Anything landing on a press that is already set up
- Store orders aggregated across a period rather than per person
The reorder exception is the important one. A repeat run needs no artwork, no new screen and no fresh decisions, so applying a first-order minimum to it charges for work you are not doing — and easy reorders are where the margin is.
Saying it well
Publish the minimum on your site and put it on the quote form. A customer who learns it before enquiring is not disappointed by it; one who learns it after describing their job in detail feels turned away.
Wording that keeps the door open
"Our minimum for screen printing is [X] pieces, because each order needs screens made regardless of quantity. For smaller runs we print digitally — same garments, no setup, priced per piece. For [quantity] that works out at [$Y] each."
That gives a reason, offers a route, and quotes a number in one breath. Where orders arrive through an online ordering system, encode the same logic there — the minimum enforced at the point of ordering, with the digital option offered automatically below it, so nobody has to police it by hand. The rest of the pricing archive assumes the minimum is a published policy rather than a mood.
What happens when you raise it
Shops delay raising a minimum because they expect to lose customers, and the loss is real but smaller and more selective than feared. What goes first is the enquiry traffic that was never going to convert profitably — the one-off six-piece requests that consumed a quote and a conversation each.
What stays is the work that was already paying. Accounts placing regular runs are unaffected by a minimum they were always above, and they rarely comment on it at all. The customers a minimum removes are disproportionately the ones that generated the most work per dollar, which is why the week usually gets quieter and the month gets better.
Give notice on existing accounts rather than applying it silently. A short email saying the minimum changes from a stated date, with the digital alternative named, costs nothing and prevents someone discovering it mid-order. Give the same courtesy to organisers running stores, where a minimum applied per person rather than per closing period would break the model entirely.
Then watch the numbers for a quarter. Enquiry count, conversion rate and average order value together tell you whether the minimum is set correctly; enquiry count on its own will always look like bad news.
