Minimum Quantities, Sample Fees, and Lead Time: What a Craft Commits You To

Choosing a decoration method looks like a purely visual decision. It is not. Every craft carries commercial terms alongside its appearance, and they are published on the craft page before you commit anything.

Reading them early is what stops a design from being finished, quoted, and only then discovered to require four times the quantity you planned.

Three numbers travel with every craft

Open any craft on the Crafts catalog and you will see them stated plainly:

• Minimum order quantity — the smallest run that craft accepts.
• Production time — the estimated manufacturing window in days for that craft.
• Sample fee — where one applies, with the amount and whether it can be waived.

These are properties of the decoration method, not of your design. A dense embroidery and a simple print are different industrial processes with different setup costs, and the numbers reflect that.

A request inherits the highest minimum, not the average

This is the rule that surprises people most. When a request uses several crafts, its minimum is the largest minimum among them.

If one print uses a craft with a minimum of 30 pieces and another uses a craft with a minimum of 100, the request needs 100. The lower minimum does not pull the requirement down, and the two do not average out — the run has to satisfy every process it contains.

The practical consequence: one expensive-to-set-up accent print can raise the floor for an entire garment. If the quantity matters more than that accent, drop the accent. If the accent matters more, plan the quantity around it.

Sample fees are often deductible

Where a craft charges for sampling, the fee is frequently waived above a quantity threshold — shown on the craft page as being free from a given piece count upward.

That structure tells you what a sample really is: a way to buy certainty on a small run, priced so it stops mattering on a large one. If you are already ordering above the threshold, sampling costs you time rather than money. If you are ordering below it, the fee is the price of finding out early, and for an unfamiliar craft on an unfamiliar fabric it is usually cheap insurance.

Lead time is the production window, not the delivery date

The days shown on a craft are a manufacturing estimate for that process. They do not include quoting, payment confirmation, quality review, or transit.

Plan backwards from the date you actually need goods in hand, and treat production and logistics as separate stages — From Approved Quote to Global Delivery covers what happens after production, and shipping is calculated separately at checkout.

If a deadline is tight, the craft choice is a lever. A simpler process with a shorter window is often the difference between shipping on time and not shipping at all.

Whether minimums and sample fees apply depends on current settings

Both minimum-quantity enforcement and sample-fee charging are platform-level configuration. When they are active, the craft page shows the relevant figures and your quote reflects them; when they are not, those lines simply do not appear.

So read what the craft page shows you now rather than assuming a rule from a previous project. The page is the current state, not a generic industry convention.

Decide crafts before you lock quantity

The sequence that avoids rework is straightforward:

1. Choose the crafts your design actually needs.
2. Read the highest minimum among them — that is your floor.
3. Check that floor against the quantity band you were targeting.
4. Decide on sampling while the run size is still adjustable.

Doing it in the other order — fixing a quantity, then choosing crafts — is what produces a finished design that cannot be ordered at the size you planned. For how those quantities then translate into a unit price, see Reading a Craft Price Matrix.